"Whats wrong with her?" My parents had found those words falling out of their mouths faster than they could stop it and louder each time that they were spoken. Years had gone by from when I had been previously hospitalized for a auto immune system disease, two to be exact, and I was back to where I was before. I began to have seizures and panic attacks regularly without a rhyme or reason which not only was unsettling but dangerous. My mom took me to the doctors and they wanted to send me away to some mental hospital. Both of my parents were taken aback at the lack of bedside manners and were concerned about the negative tone that this doctor was speaking in. When you ask for advice it's best that you ask not only one but multiple people because you never know if the person is biased, or if the person truly understands the question and even hearing the problem over again can help you analyze and find the best choice.

Mental health has been stigmatized for years and unfortunately that stigma prevented me from getting a quick diagnoses. My mom decided to take me to the doctors office after intense panic attacks, dissociation episodes and, seizures. The doctor had claimed that I was simply a nut case and that i was to be institutionalized. Even at the age of six I felt like I should hide my issues, that I shouldn't tell people how I felt because they would think less of me or they would think i was crazy. Until I met with a neurologist. The neurologist told me all about what was actually going on inside my brain and how I shouldn't be ashamed of it, but she also told me that some people are biased when it comes to mental health, and how some people don't believe that these issues even exist. I spent a while thinking about how many of the nurses and doctors I had seen and how they told me that i was just a little girl throwing temper tantrums, or that I had been sheltered too much as baby, and how no one ever wanted to talk about my mental health. Thats when i realized how a bias can change someone's opinion.

The unknown is something most people fear. It's only human to want to know everything, but sometimes we dont know things and that's a hard thing to admit especially when you are a doctor working on the case of a dying six year old. I had met doctors that have flat out told me that they didn't know what was wrong with my brain, but i've also met doctors that thought they did but really didn't. It was always you have this you have that and the second opinion was different from the first, and the third was different from the fourth. We couldn't find a common connection between each diagnoses. The treatments for each separate diagnoses wouldn't help me in fact they would hurt me more. Medicines and therapy were a constant for me, but the unknown didn't provide much information, so therapy was almost useless. We started to ask around everywhere for answers hoping someone knowledgeable would show up and help us.

It was four months into the mystery that was my brain, and frankly we were starting to lose hope. My body had taken a toll from various medicines and hospital trips, I was pulled out of school as well as dance. The only thing I could do was sit in the hospital bed and read. My one friend was my neurologist, she would come in and check up on me everyday when i was in the hospital. She would always listen to my mom's complaints or my father's awful jokes, she would constantly reassure my brother that i was going to be okay. Whenever she visited she would talk to me about things that she thought would help figure out what i had, that was when i realized that she hadn't once stopped thinking about this, we had told her so many times what was happening she was starting to put pieces together and make the best choice. One fateful day a doctor came in the room with a clipboard and paper, he simply handed it to my parents, and thats when a wave of relief flooded the room, we finally had a logical diagnoses. My neurologist had spent so much time listening to us and hearing this problem over and over again that it stuck with her, she eventually thought over it so many times that she figured out the best possible diagnoses and treatment.

"Encephalitis and a Micoplasma infection." My Parents often find themselves using those words when describing how I have become such a curious and mature young woman. Making decisions is hard especially when you have to make them for yourself. My parents have always been supportive of letting me make decisions on my own, but they always gave me plenty of advice and during times like then advice is exactly what i needed but i also needed advice from someone other than my parents, and i made the hard decision that i would listen to the doctors as an adult would as well as listen to my parents to make my choice. The choice i made ended up being the best possible choice and i am forever grateful that i learned this lesson. When you ask for advice it's best that you ask not only one but multiple people because you never know if the person is biased, or if the person truly understands the question and even hearing the problem over again can help you analyze and find the best possible choice.    