Speaker 1: It was like somebody's stabbing on the side of the
Speaker 1: head with an ice pick, and everything sort of went blurry.
Speaker 2: The disease is like a crow flying through the dark night.
Speaker 2: Patients go months or years incurring damage in all of
Speaker 2: these organs.
Speaker 3: How do you identify something you can't see.
Speaker 4: Going to the emergency room, They're not going to do
Speaker 4: anything for me. I've done that before. I've gone to
Speaker 4: see culp and I'm just pushed aside.
Speaker 3: Something you know is there but can't trace.
Speaker 5: That's what I knew. I couldn't control, and that's what
Speaker 5: I knew. You have a disease of some sort.
Speaker 3: I couldn't explain it, A threat always lurking under the surface.
Speaker 3: I'm Lauren bray pacheco host of Symptomatic, a medical mystery
Speaker 3: podcast where we investigate the nature of rare conditions, shape
Speaker 3: shifting diseases, and the extraordinary lengths patients will go in
Speaker 3: search of a diagnosis.
Speaker 4: I didn't have the answer yet. I was terrified of
Speaker 4: the unknown.
Speaker 1: It's like the mystery of a lifetime.
Speaker 3: This season, Symptomatic follows people who refuse to give up
Speaker 3: their search for answers, leaving no stone unturned to uncover
Speaker 3: the truth behind their symptoms.
Speaker 1: So I just decided I have to fix this.
Speaker 4: And this is my life, and this is something I've
Speaker 4: been struggling with for for too long.
Speaker 5: If you're looking at it without understanding the disease, you're
Speaker 5: just looking at a collection of symptoms that aren't connected.
Speaker 1: For the first time, it occurred to me, maybe this
Speaker 1: is all sort of one thing.
Speaker 4: I'm not afraid to stand up for myself.
Speaker 5: We're starting to realize that there's so much more underneath
Speaker 5: the surface that we didn't see before.
Speaker 3: Join us for all new episodes where we dive into
Speaker 3: the medical unknown to investigate the mysteries of chronic illness.
Speaker 1: Whatever this is. It's killing me and I need to
Speaker 1: know what it is. I wasn't ready to die.
Speaker 3: This is symptomatic. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you get the stories that matter to you.