This is so hard to read. I know this dance. My prep bag for ER comes with all the tools to survive in there alone, and yet, I hesitate to look too prepared as nurses sniff "regular" on me and I'm done. Last time the IV bandaid didn't stick, I bled profusely on the way home all over my favorite fabric bag. It was a free one, comes with gift at Shoppers Drug Mart, but it's bright yellow with blue peacocks and so cheery, it has to be my hospital garb bag because it lifts me up, reminds me I like makeup and creams and all the normal things and this here ER trip is a blip. I furiously washed the bright red until it was brown. It made me feel helpless and anxious just looking at it. It was a sign of the fast finishing up of me, my ER VIP pass over, lights are on, go home now please, we have more important things to do, let's tear this needle out of you... I went back to Shoppers, explained my plight - "what do I need to buy to get that bag again?" "Forget it" she said, and she gave be another, and one from last season too. I cried right there. She had a great smile, a great nod, behind her plexi glass I could tell she'd have hugged me if she could, the empathy, comaradarie, the "we're in this stupid world as women together and I hear you" was palpable and pure. My sister asked about the bag with the stain on it this week as it was in my donation bag she was taking to the clothing drop. "You can get that stain out, you know" - I told her I can't ever get that stain out.

I guess what I want to say is I hear you. There is a fundamental flaw of apathy out there. It's part of my life with my "chronic issue" and as it's an odds game, I've increased my odds of seeing the worst, the best, the defunct, the mistakes and the ugly.

I recently had a new GP I was interviewing to see if I wanted to work with her. I knew it was a no before she even came into the zoom as I waited for 90 minutes plus. When she entered her energy was so apathetic, impatient and just not present, there was no hearing me, she repeated the same questions over like it was the first time. I wrote her off before we even ended the zoom. Yet somehow in that 15 minute meeting she heard I had a seizure and she reported it to ICBC and a month later I receive a letter the DMV revoked my driver's license permanently. This GP was not yet my doctor. I was doing my due diligence interviewing a few who I hoped would be a fit. I have an endo, a neurologist and people whose care I'm under who know I am perfectly capable of driving. It wasn't a seizure, it was vertigo from inner ear crystals. Her mistake, a miscalculation from not lisetning wasn't surprising but alarming. She didn't read my file, she didn't consult with anyone, just decided to change my life forever. After a week of letters, e-mails, faxes and on-holds she will reverse the mistake. But the backlog at the DMV will have me wait THREE MONTHS before I am approved to drive again.

The system is not in our favor. And the PTSD from my accumulated experiences with the medical system has been an intimate struggle for me. I find it so hard to trust anyone and those I do carry a heavy burden because I hang on them for hope and they feel it, and I don't think they want that responsibility. No one would believe the stories I have. But reading yours has me trust we will all one day be an army of the change we hope to see.