What happens when you have a disease doctors can't diagnose | Jennifer Brea

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2017

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Five years ago, TED Fellow Jennifer Brea became progressively ill with myalgic encephalomyelitis, commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating illness that severely impairs normal activities and on bad days makes even the rustling of bed sheets unbearable. In this poignant talk, Brea describes the obstacles she's encountered in seeking treatment for her condition, whose root causes and physical effects we don't fully understand, as well as her mission to document through film the lives of patients that medicine struggles to treat.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features filmmaker Jennifer Brea, recorded live at TED Summit,
0:12.3	2016.
0:14.1	Jennifer Brea is sound sensitive.
0:16.2	The live audience was asked to applaud ASL style in silence.
0:22.4	Hi.
0:24.7	Thank you.
0:27.6	So five years ago, this is me.
0:31.5	I was a PhD student at Harvard, and I loved to travel.
0:36.0	I had just gotten engaged to marry the love of my life.
0:40.6	I was 28, and like so many of us and we are in good health,
0:44.8	I felt like I was invincible.
0:48.1	Then one day I had a fever of 104.7 degrees.
0:52.5	I probably should have gone to the doctor, but I'd never really been sick in my life,
0:57.0	and I knew that usually if you have a virus, you stay home
1:00.0	and you make some chicken soup,
1:03.0	and in a few days everything will be fine.
1:06.0	But this time, it wasn't fine.
1:09.0	After the paper broke, for three weeks I was so dizzy.
1:12.6	I couldn't leave my house.
1:14.6	I would walk straight into door frames.
1:17.6	I had to hug the walls just to make it to the bathroom.
1:22.6	That spring, I got infection after infection.
	...

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