It was like somebody stabbing the side of the head with an ice pick, and everything sort of went blurry.

The disease is like a crow flying through the dark night.

Patients go months or years, incurring damage in all of these organs.

How do you identify something you can't see?

Going to the emergency room, they're not going to do anything for me.

I've done that before.

I've gone to seek help and I'm just pushed aside.

Something you know is there but can't trace.

That's what I knew. I couldn't trace. That's what I knew I couldn't control,

and that's what I knew you have a disease of some sort. I couldn't explain it. A threat always lurking under the surface. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, host of Symptomatic, a Medical Mystery podcast,

where we investigate the nature of rare conditions,

shape-shifting diseases, and the extraordinary lengths patients will go

in search of a diagnosis.

I didn't have the answer yet.

I was terrified of the unknown. It's like the mystery of a diagnosis. I didn't have the answer yet. I was terrified of the unknown.

It's like the mystery of a lifetime.

This season, Symptomatic follows people who refuse to give up their search for answers,

leaving no stone unturn to uncover the truth behind their symptoms.

So I just decided I have to fix this. This is my life and this is

something I've been struggling with for far too long. If you're looking at it without understanding

the disease, you're just looking at a collection of symptoms that aren't connected. For the first time

it occurred to me, maybe this is all sort of one thing. I'm not afraid to stand up for myself.

...