The report from the hospital across town had one word near the top that I had read a hundred times since Friday. Crohn disease. Severe. With a note from the specialist that said the inflammation had likely been active for close to a year.
Paula looked at it. Then she picked it up and read it again, slowly this time.
I had gone to the emergency room over the weekend when the pain got so bad I could not sleep. A young doctor there listened to me for ten minutes, ordered a scan in an hour, and sat on the edge of my bed afterward and said, you have been sick for a long time, have you not?
I cried right there in front of him. Not because of the diagnosis. Because somebody finally believed me.
Eight months of being told I was anxious, and the answer had been sitting inside me the whole time, waiting for one person to look.
The older woman in the waiting room was still watching. The front desk girl, whose name was Jada, got up and walked back to the office without a word. A minute later the clinic physician, Dr. Whitmore, came out. She read the report standing at the counter. Then she asked me to come back to a room with her. Paula stayed at the desk.
Dr. Whitmore went through my chart with me, every visit, every note. She was quiet for a long time. Then she said she was sorry. She said my symptoms were written down clearly in my file, over and over, and someone should have ordered imaging months ago. She said that was on the clinic, not on me.
She gave me the number for the patient advocate. She said I should use it, and that she would support whatever I decided.
I did file a report. Not to get anybody fired. I just did not want the next woman to wait eight months.
The clinic changed its policy that spring. Any patient who came in three times for the same unresolved complaint would be automatically reviewed by a physician. Dr. Whitmore told me that herself.
Paula called me a few weeks later. I almost did not answer. She said she had been a nurse for twenty six years and had gotten into a habit of deciding who was really sick in the first five minutes. She said she had been wrong about me, and she was sorry, and she had been thinking about it every day.
I believed her. I told her so.
My new specialist started treatment right away. It took a few months to find what worked. There were bad weeks. But the pain eased. I started eating again. I started sleeping through the night.
In June, my daughter ran across the yard and jumped at me the way she used to, arms out, not even thinking about it.
I caught her. I lifted her all the way up over my head. She squealed so loud the neighbors looked over.
I held her there for a long time. Longer than she wanted. She did not know why I was crying. I did.