It's probably in your head

 Many years before I was diagnosed with diffuse systemic sclerosis and breast cancer, and later with metastatic malign melanoma, I suffered from chronic back pain.

The doctor didn´t give me any diagnosis. No measurable tests that verified my narrative. It was between the lines that the pain could be caused by ... something psychological.

Do you suffer from “good girl syndrome?” they asked.

My brother, also a doctor, and with exactly the same symptoms in his back, was never asked if he might be suffering from good-boy syndrome, or if it was something with his head that explained the pain. He was offered surgery. I was referred to a psychiatrist.

In the end we both got help from a surgeon abroad.

 I will never forget the first meeting with the surgeon who finally helped me. Tell me, he said.

I started to explain with general phrases.

No, he said. Now we go through the day. Absolutely concrete. And the night.

In that way, it became visible to myself, and to him, how the pain ruled my days. My life.

 Then he attached the X-rays to the light board. Look here, he said, and explained what was wrong at the bottom of the spine and was causing the pain. He assessed the findings differently from the specialist health service in Norway, and most importantly: he considered the objective findings along with what I had told him about living with this back pain for many years.

 It turned out not to be in my head. It was between the vertebrae.

 I never thought I'd face this unspoken assumption, maybe it is something psychological, when I now have one diagnosis after another to show for. It is a two-digit number of diagnoses. So far, all doors in the healthcare system have been wide open and I have received all the help imaginable. I am grateful for that.

 But during a period, a few years ago when I became very ill and the school medicine didn't figure it out, the same thing happened again: no objective findings on X-rays or in the blood tests, urine or graphs from spirometry; when the problems cannot be put into a diagnosis, and you are a woman, yes, then it is in your head.

 It turned out not to be in my head. It was cancer.

Uncertainty is not easy to bear for either scholar or common man.

But it's okay not to know. That we can't figure it out. It´s fine.

It is when the therapist launches a response that does not resonate with the patient at all, that overstepping takes place.

Curiosity is good medicine against being too confident.