Prescription to a revolution or how to create a Patient-Led healthcare

We are the faces of healthcare. Photo by Harel Rinzler

I’ve always wanted to be a Doctor. I didn’t exactly know what it entails, but I wanted to help people, save them and give them hope.

I’ve joined the army as a combat soldier, aiming to be an army medic, but soon Everything changed; after an injury I sustained during training, I started to experience strange symptoms that got worse until one day I could not function anymore, I was honorably discharged to my faith, but not long after, I finally collapsed.

My hospitalization felt helpless, lying on a corridor in a busy internal ward where the staff is giving in under the enormous burden. I realized what it is like to be a patient.

I didn’t make this dream come true; I didn’t become a Doctor, But I had the privilege of learning what it is like to be a patient, and that experience changed my life.

I have spent the next three years running around between dozens of Doctors that told me terrible stuff and even accused me of faking my illness but never gave me hope. I have listened to dozens of doctors, but very few have listened to my story. It all leads to the moment a very senior Doctor told my parents while ignoring my presence in the room That they would buy me a nice mattress and connect my room to a cable TV because I am never going to work a day in my life, marry a woman or go to university.

That night after coming home, I had to decide. Decide whether I am healing myself, Or killing myself.

I didn’t have a lot to live for; I was bedridden, with zero quality of life and, worse, no hope of getting better. I still didn’t have a diagnosis or a treatment,

I chose life.

I acquired any medical school material I could get my hands on and started to study medicine from my bed. It took me almost two years, but I had my diagnosis, and after many fights, this diagnosis was confirmed by the medical establishment.

My illness, Dysautonomia, and specifically POTS syndrome, Could be diagnosed in about 5 minutes after ruling out all the basic differential diagnoses; It took me five years.

Five lost years of seeing my friends on social media living their lives, I had none.