Voices of Autoimmune Patients

Autoimmune diseases are invisible: they often don't present externally and seemingly slip through the grasp of doctors' diagnoses. These are glimpses of the stories and voices of autoimmune patients from our Stanford MedicineX Workshop Survey that highlight the long and arduous struggles many autoimmune patients face with diagnosis.

Due to the invisible nature of autoimmune diseases, many of its patients look normal and healthy. This presents a challenge for patients’ social sphere, a struggle when seeing doctors for diagnosis, and a lack of general awareness and knowledge of all autoimmune diseases. Despite the many statistics on autoimmune disease, it’s time to put a voice to the numbers.

We present to you, a snippet of our shocking Stanford MedicineX Workshop Survey responses.

Believe it or not, these are the real experiences and words of the lonely voices of autoimmune disease.

It took 7 years and more than 13 doctors to get them to even TEST for my autoimmunity.

It took me 5 years and 12 specialists to be diagnosed with Celiac and Hashimoto’s.

I want the next person to be diagnosed on the first doctor.

I went through several decades of primary doctors dismissing my symptoms because the tests they chose to run came back “normal.”

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