A doctor usually has many patients; however, each of his or her patients has only one life. And then there's that other familiar way of putting it: "Your doctor won't be buried in your casket." According to recent statistics, 500,000 Americans suffer from preventable medical errors each year. Of these, close to 100,000 die. Approximately 40 percent of medical malpractice claims are now based on a failure to diagnose a medical condition.

In my particular case, I encountered health problems that are experienced by only a small percentage of the population. In other words my symptoms did not fit neatly into a textbook case. And, because of this, my life-stealing health problems eventually became life-threatening ones. And so I went from doctor to doctor, desperately trying to find help, feeling betrayed by my body and the medical profession. After a certain amount of time, I felt as though the doctors wanted me to simply disappear since I reminded them of their failures. When numerous and never-ending tests continued to come back negative, other than showing an occasional urinary tract infection for which I was given an antibiotic, I would be offered nerve medicine or anti-depressants. In reality, I think these frustrated physicians needed the anti-depressants more than I did. All I wanted was for them to tell me what was wrong, but it seemed this was not going to happen"at least not until I lived through a seemingly endless nightmare.

Soon I began to feel like a hypochondriac! The doctors didn't use the word, but I could read it in their faces. And this made me start to doubt myself. Although I had lost weight, I didn't look that sick. What if these professionals were correct"that most of my symptoms existed only in my mind? After all, urinary tract infections couldn't possibly cause the range of symptoms I was having. I must advise readers that if a doctor tries to say that nothing is wrong with you, whether overtly or not so overtly, you should walk out the door and not look back. Believe in yourself and what your body is telling you. As Dr. Ray C. Wunderlich, Jr. one of the doctors who contributed to my book entitled Medical Misfit, Doctor Why Can't You Diagnose Me, explained, "The two aspects"mind and body"of human beings are like the heads and tails of a coin. They are always melding. A physician who says there is nothing physically wrong with a patient is almost always wrong."

As it turned out my urinary problems were related to a condition that my newly-recommended urologist finally diagnosed. This condition is called Interstitial Cystitis, an inflamed bladder wall, commonly referred to as IC. Even today, it takes three to five years to get this condition diagnosed. I had an ulcerated bladder which the specialist called "grotesque." This caring and competent physician, who wrote a paper on my case, said he didn't know how I had been able to walk around with such a condition; it was the worst ulceration he had ever seen. Ninety-five percent of patients with IC don't have ulcers, but I fell into this five percent bracket. I had been treated for urinary tract infections"one after the other"but the primary care physicians never once considered that I could have an ulcerated bladder. This ultimately caused the infections but curing them didn't get to the root of the problem; we had to address the ulcers. Doctors had mistakenly assumed I was just a new mother who was suffering from nerves. They were wrong!

Later on I was diagnosed with a yeast infection"an overgrowth of Candida. The months and months of being given antibiotics for urinary tract infections had brought about this overgrowth. Antibiotics don't have a brain; they cannot simply target the bad bacteria. The lactobacillus gets killed off, then candida, the other main intestinal bacteria goes into overgrowth causing many different symptoms. I experienced abdominal pain, dizziness, headache, irritable bowel syndrome, sinusitis, ulcers of the lower esophagus, and seizures. Once I was diagnosed, I tried to learn everything I could about yeast infections. There are many more symptoms that I talk about in my book; I also discuss what must be done to overcome a yeast infection. One of my own resources was a book entitled The Yeast Syndrome by Dr. John Parks Trowbridge. This doctor was kind enough to write the foreword to Medical Misfit, my own book, which was recently published by www.booklocker.com. He is as eager to educate people about this problem as I am.

If you are having a problem getting diagnosed properly, I implore you not to give up. Don't be intimated by physicians who are, after all, only human beings with an education in medicine. If your physician is too busy to really listen to you or wants you to believe that your symptoms are "all in your head," it's time to vote with your feet by leaving that professional and finding one who won't quit on you until he or she solves the medical mystery. When you find such a physician, be sure to spread the word so that others can benefit from this individual's expertise and determination.