I see lots of doctors. Over the last two years, I can’t really count how many times I’ve been to a doctor.

See, two years ago, I started to suffer from chronic pain and it was getting in the way of a lot of the activities I did. At first, I figured I had pulled a muscle badly in my leg and that was the focus of the pain, but when it didn’t go away months, I began seeing a doctor.

At first it wasn’t such a big deal, blood tests weren’t something I was scared of and the x-rays weren’t particularly nerve-wracking, either. It was long and tedious to get through the test that first appointment, but I was glad that they were getting done.

It was by the sixth doctor appointment that I was starting to get tired of it.

Why couldn’t anyone figure out why I was in so much pain all the time?

There was no clear answer to that, so I stopped asking it. Whatever I had did not want to be found. I just had to have faith that my doctors would eventually figure it out. It’s hard having faith of that when you go through test after test after test. How much of my blood was needed to tell a doctor once again that I didn’t have half the things they were testing for.

Doctors are equally a shine of hope for me and a sheer disappointment. They all have ideas of what I could have, all have hope that they’ll be the ones to find what it is. It’s heartwarming to have a doctor tell me what they think it might be when they don’t push away ideas that I have. It makes it easier to have more blood taken if they act like they care about me and what I have.

The disappointment comes later when the tests results come in. Negative, negative, negative, positive. There are always many negatives and one or two positive results. Always the same positive results, always leading me to the same path that I had taken just months before.

Doctors are amazing people and they do I job I never could. I love them and hate them at the same time. They give me hope that one day I will figure out what I have, but they also serve disappointment with that hope. I have an off and on relationship with doctors, but that’s fine by me--at least one day we’ll know what I have.