“Not knowing why I’ve felt this way - for so long - is making me depressed,” I told the psychiatrist that day in July a few months before my wedding, my voice cracking. But I remained a burden, an annoyance, a disappointment. The idea of postponing the wedding was dwarfed by the guilt of the time and money already spent by family, and perhaps dwarfed by the hope that my body would come to its senses just in time. At the age of 32, I began to hate my body.įriends grew silent over my unreliability, my future husband visibly uneasy with the fear of what our marriage would look like with my failing body. I thought I found my cure, but my hopefulness was soon dashed when I didn’t improve much. I was deficient, and required injections to get them back up. One doctor finally listened to the possible causes I had found after hours of online research, and agreed to check my B12 levels. That spring, I visited doctor after doctor, most of them shrugging at my unrelenting symptoms that by then should have dissipated. The Prozac didn’t make me feel healthier, either. I did as I was told, but my body remained stubborn. The nurse who called to inform me advised I rest for two weeks.
In turn, after some insistence on my part, she agreed to order a mono test. The first doctor I went to, in January 2013, smiled smugly and said, “You’re just nervous about your wedding.” I agreed to go back on Prozac. I had by then spent half a year trying to convince countless doctors that the weight loss, nausea and weakness I was experiencing were the result of something more than general anxiety.