The medical incompetence in regards to women has ruined my life. I’m 27 and I don’t know where to go from here.

I spent three or four years vomiting multiple times a week. Going to the doctor again and again, to hear “oh, it’s just stress. Oh, well, let’s do some bloodwork.”

Finally I moved and got competent doctors. There had been polyps in my stomach. Once they were removed, I felt much better, and I’ve only thrown up once in the 11 months since. It still should never have taken four years.

Well, now I’m facing other health concerns. Big health concerns. My shoulders are forever tight. They started feeling this way when I was fourteen. Now my shoulders hurt all the time. I’m in agony. So does my neck. So does the back of my head. I hurt all the way down to the middle of my back. They found two moderate herniated discs in my neck.

Last year, I started having small occurrences of vertigo. They’ve steadily worsened and now I feel dizzy anytime I stand. I’m frequently off balance. I’ve fallen three times in the last month. My hands and arms go numb and/or tingly. Frequently. Sometimes they stay like that for hours. It’s painful and uncomfortable. My eyes no longer work like they used to. I have to speak with my neurologist about this on Monday.

The thing is, for years, I mentioned the pain in my shoulders and back. The pain in my ribs. The pain everywhere. And not one doctor ever sent me for further examination until now. Until my life started falling apart.

The thing is, I’m a stylist. My hands and arms are what I use daily. They’re my tools. And sometimes my shoulders hurt so badly when I lift my arms that I could scream in agony. And then I have to call out. Again and again. Today is my 8th day home. 5 of these were scheduled off, 3 of them were not. I’m missing 1-2 days a week because my hands are numb or my shoulders hurt, and I ice my shoulders and take ibuprofen, and use heat, and do the exercises my physical therapist taught me. Nothing works. And if it does, it’s just enough to push through, and then I’m incapacitated again. See, I work for a chain. I do men’s hair. I get paid. But this is a corporation, technically, a franchise. I don’t have a clientele I can take with me because I’ve had health issues for so long that there was no way for me to work in a place that would allow me to build that. I needed the guaranteed money on those slow days. I still do.

And the thing is, I love my job. I like my manager, I like my assistant manager, and I like all but one of my coworkers. I like almost all of my clients and I absolutely love the work that I do.

And now I can’t. And I have no other skills. And there are many days when it’s all I can do to drag myself out of bed to my computer to play one mindless game or another to keep my mind off of how guilty and useless I feel for not being able to do… anything. I mean, I can do normal things. I can walk around a book store or grocery store some days (some days, I can’t) and some days I manage to get some dishes done or a litter box scooped. But when my dominant hand is numb and I’m in agony; I don’t have the dexterity or energy to work. My once beautiful haircuts feel less than mediocre to me; I can no longer take pride in my work. I tried pushing through at first, only to realize that the best I could do on those days was mediocre at best and messy at worst.

I spent years telling doctors I was in pain. Years telling them my hands were cramping. Years telling them my shoulders hurt frequently. Years telling them I was vomiting. And not one doctor did a thing until I moved halfway across the country. If they had done MRIs and intensive testing then, maybe I wouldn’t be in pain every single day, all day. Maybe a solution would’ve been found.

Now they tell me they’re going to scan my brain and the middle of my back; they already did my neck. Now I’ve gone to the eye doctor to discover that one of my eyes can no longer be made to see in 20/20 vision with glasses and that one of them now processes color differently. She told me that she’d send me to a neurologist if I wasn’t seeing one already.

And what am I supposed to do? Doing hair is the only real skill I have. I’m very intelligent and I know a lot about a lot of things, but I have no degree. My partner can’t support us both. I don’t know how I’m supposed to support myself… most unskilled labor requires use of the body… and some days, I can barely stand. I can’t seem to find a work from home job doing customer service to save my life. I could answer calls; I’d be good at that. I have great customer service skills and phone etiquette.

But I can’t seem to find anything. I don’t want to move back in with my mother, half a country away, where no doctor ever bothered to really and truly test me for the issues I continuously brought up. I can pay my own bills if I could just find a simple part time job where I don’t have to move too much.

I don’t know what to do, but half a decade of doctors not being bothered to do anything for me has landed me in a situation where I feel entirely lost and desperate.

Please, someone, just offer some encouragement or advice. I don’t know what to do anymore.