Karly | Spellbound Healing
Spellbound Healing
Navigating Chronic Illness and Grief
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Navigating Chronic Illness and Grief

When Your Labs Are Normal but Your Body Isn’t: MCAS, Trauma, and the Grief of Not Being Diagnosed

I have been fighting to find a diagnosis for my mystery chronic illness for a long time. Every time I see a doctor they go “whoa” that ain’t right, but no one knows why my shit goes haywire. I know I have systemic inflammation because it’s in my stomach and esophagus, and it’s in my blood.

I’m sick enough to be tested for all of the big autoimmune diseases, but I don’t have any of them. I have a lifetime of not being believed. I thought I was

But when my labs came back…. they were “normal.”

Again.

I immediately started to cry. I had hella emotions: disappointment, grief, shame, even self-doubt.

Like, maybe I was just gaslighting myself and I’m actually healthy (haha).

And then I thought again, maybe it’s just the PTSD. Where do people like me get medical care for an invisible illness?

In this episode of The Digital Mirror, I talk about what it’s like to grieve a diagnosis you never got and the quiet truth I found waiting on the other side: Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) might be the missing piece.

And that maybe… I was never broken, just surviving on high alert for too long.

If you’ve ever felt like you were the only one who couldn’t get answers, like your body was screaming while the world told you you were fine, this one’s for you.

You’re not imagining it, and I believe you.

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