What I Wish Doctors Told Me About Chronic Illness

Stella Guan
9 min readNov 12, 2019

I learned it the hard way so you don’t have to

I was lying on the exam table at my primary care doctor’s office.

“Yup, you are definitely bloated,” said my doctor. After a brief abdominal exam, I was instructed to take Zantac and go on a bland diet.

The next thing I remember was rushing myself to urgent care. In the span of a week, my acid reflux had become so severe that I couldn’t even take down water. I became extremely dizzy and nauseous from dehydration. I knew I couldn’t go to sleep like…

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