Two decades of agony for a single piece of printer paper, annotated and signed, ceremoniously declaring the basic facts of my body. I leave the clinic as wrinkled seniors stare puzzled after my supple, young skin. Their suspicious eyes miss me catching my ankle rolling over the threshold, subluxing as I cross the line into medically, officially abnormal. I sit in my car, ecstatic and miserable. I call saying I’m on my way and, also, they diagnosed me. Lifelong mystery solved. But what does naming it change? I rub my aching wrists like I always have and, apparently, always will.
M.G. Shirk is a recent college grad who got a hEDS diagnosis and joined a hockey class anyway, battling despair with hope. (Well, trying to.)