You Deserve To Live Your Life
by a patient
I was just a year or two out of college, and I was not getting anywhere in finding relief for ulcerative colitis. The GI doctor I had been going to just gave me the same story every time and I never felt like I was being heard. He was not even open to trying different or newly approved treatments. I ended up switching to our local teaching hospital when I was running out of mental and physical energy to keep fighting. They were able to get me into a last-minute appointment. During that appointment, we went through my disease and medication history and all of the normal things, and then the doctor looked at me and told me, "You deserve to live your life," and I cried. I had never heard anyone, let alone a physician, recognize that. I had been so wrapped up in the daily task of managing symptoms and trying to manage life that I had barely recognized it myself. It was the first time that a doctor had ever recognized that I was a whole person, not just a vessel of symptoms. 