My name is Britni, and I am a 28 year old Instructional Designer working on managing life with chronic illnesses. I am lucky to spend my life with my husband, A, and our three pets: Dr. Pepper, the greyhound; and Orion and Icarus the cats.
I have extremely light sensitive migraines/ ocular migraines (which are at times chronic), depression, gastroparesis, endometriosis and suspected adenomyosis, suspected costochondritis, and asthma. And some mystery neurological condition (pins and needles, numbness, involuntary leg spasms, cognitive struggles…).
With all of that comes a lot of fatigue.
This blog is my safe space to come and talk about my daily and long-term experiences with this constant struggle.
You can check out my professional site/blog/portfolio at life-is-learning.britnibrownodonnell.com if you’re interested.
the best liar you know 
Hi Britni, sorry about all your complications. I understand about feeling shut-down by medical people. As a possible tip, I used to repair heating equipment and found there was a “class” of people who were totally incurious and unimaginative. They were awful at diagnosis because they preferred the “first guess must be right because it matches my need to look expert.”
Very difficult to break THEM of this because it fulfills some need they have. Plus, being an academic, you probably reject the idea of walking away from difficulty as a viable solution? Sending you a way without answers is a sign of being personally unaccountable which is hard to understand–I don’t understand it because I was raised to be annoyingly pig-headed about trying to get things right.
Can you find a doctor that will be curious about you? Even an egotistical, hard as hell to put up with one that loves the adventure of discovery that you represent? Maybe as a weird experiment a list could be made of the characteristics you need in a specialist?
Things like: Non-Judgmental; Unafraid of intelligent and persistent young people; Really Empathetic, as in Really Empathetic; accepting the authenticy of patient experience…
This is an interesting link to a site on continuity of care and it might reveal some thoughts. Being chronically ill is about having a life story of interruptions that chain together into a meaningful story. Keep talking about–you matter!
And as usual I forgot the link:
HQCA report outlines lack of progress
http://healtharrows.ca/hqca-report-outlines-lack-of-progress/