In response to Stine’s 6 minutes challenge:

https://wp.me/pbhg2m-8nw

They Thought It Was My Teeth

Pain has a way of convincing people it must be simple.

A tooth. A nerve. Something visible on an x-ray that can be pulled, fixed, removed. So I sat in the chair trusting that someone understood what my body was trying to say, even while my body itself seemed to be speaking a language no one fully recognized yet.

The wisdom tooth came out.

But the pain did not leave with it. Instead, something tore — sinus, tissue, certainty. And afterward, my body seemed to wake into a different kind of battle entirely, one that had been waiting quietly beneath the surface for longer than anyone knew.

Later came the name.

Sjogren’s syndrome. Autoimmune. Chronic. Words that explained things and changed things at the same time. Suddenly the symptoms belonged to a larger story, one my immune system had been writing in secret.

I still think about those dentist visits sometimes.

How easily suffering can be mistaken for something smaller. How the body often knows long before the diagnosis arrives. And how there is grief in realizing you were never weak, dramatic, or imagining it — you were ill, and unheard.

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Word count: 228

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sj%C3%B6gren%27s_disease

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With love

— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫

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If you want a reading, send me an email:

Afterlove-Voice@hotmail.com

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