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Anyone in pain. You're labeled a liar and an addict immediately.

I would actually suggest "complex" and "invisible" are the wrong terms. Such conditions as ME/CFS, POTS, Ehlers Danlos, Sjogrens and Long Covid are very, very visible and painfully obvious to patiens and their families, friends and colleagues.🧵

My disease IS invisible. You don't see osteoarthritis. And medical care is shit because primaries don't want to see a patient with a painful disease. They dump them.

I'm really sorry you aren't getting the care you deserve. It sounds to me like the doctors you're dealing with are being willfully negligent. Osteoarthritis is a medically very well-established and well-understood condition, it's only 'invisible' if they're deliberately choosing not to see it.

These diseases are made medically invisible by a lack of research funding, a lack of medical school teaching, a lack of specialists and care pathways, a lack of knowledge among doctors and nurses. As for "complex," they are not more complex than cancer, multiple sclerosis or Alzheimers.

And all these diseases are common, not rare. I'd suggest we should call these diseases "medically neglected".