Do you support minor self diagnosis?
I started cracking my knuckles in fifth grade. My parents asked me why, and I told them it made the pain go away. My parents told me that I was too young for my joints to hurt, and that I would ruin them if I kept cracking them.
By the time was fourteen or fifteen and entering high school, I hadn’t stopped cracking my knuckles. The hurt more, and the relief was more. I was convinced that I had arthritis.
My parents told me that I was too young to have arthritis.
Fast forward thirty seven years when my joints take a dive and I cannot even get out of bed on some days. I take chemo therapy pills twice a week, and I have two injections of chemotherapy ever four months. I have to take two medications every day just to manage the pain the chemotherapy doesn’t cover.
This at least allows me to get out of bed and on most days it allows me to go to school. It doesn’t make the pain go away, and on bad days I want to cry it gets so bad.
The diagnosis? Early Onset Rheumatoid Arthritis.
It went unchecked for twenty five years, my immune system eating away at my joints like a buffet even though I wanted to go to the doctor from day one.
If I had gone to the doctor and I had been wrong - they found nothing - well, we would have been out a few bucks for the doctor’s visit.If I was right - and I was right - I would have been treated for 20 years.
If I had gone to the doctor on my insistence that I had arthritis at fifteen, I would not be in pain today. This would have been treated twenty years go.
Do I support minor self diagnosis?
Yes. Absolutely.
I would rather a minor self diagnose and be wrong than a minor ignore their body and suffer for 20 years like me. No one is harmed by listening to a minor and taking their concerns seriously. But that minor might be harmed for the rest of their life you ignore them.
My choice is always to listen to the minors about their bodies.
I knew I had severe anxiety when I was 14. I was not put on meds or have any help really until I was 20. I had to go through high school and a lot of college hoping to get hit by a bus. Literally, I didn't want to hurt myself, but if someone else could just hurt me enough to get a fucking break that would have been great. But, my family doesn't talk about mental health. We don't go to doctors for stuff like that, so I suffered. So yeah, minors, advocate for yourself because sometimes your parents won't.
