Perseverance: YOU Be that One in a Million!: "Doctors Making Change"

by Margaret Aranda, MD, PhD

After 9 years in bed after a car accident, 5 books, numerous articles, and 2nd place in a Social Media Medicine Award, the highlight was when I received the Perseverance Award from the Invisible Disabilities Association, back in 2011. Every one of my books has won a Top 12 Picks from Nancy Mills' Spirited Woman. Today I add to my list, a coveted membership by election into

"DOCTORS MAKING CHANGE"

I do all things with God in my head and Christ at my side, and am humbly grateful for this distinction. Being a patient advocate in invisible disabilities has given me more gray hair than I need, with seemingly little support on blogs, posted comments on Google+, RETWEETS, or Comments. Certainly, all my books are undersold, but I keep telling myself it's because I "haven't been discovered yet" or "it's all in God's time." Nothing stops me. I just keep on going.

So I pretty much thought that all this time, I was just being an advocate for Women's Health and dysautonomia, and all the invisible diseases. Sort of in my own world and on my own mission, contrived or not, I set out to work past the disabilities of my own, one seemingly following the other while being laughed at for "pretending" to be sick. Rather thankless, I remained spurred on by what I thought God wanted me to do, and also writing as a way of documenting various occurrences and giving hope and inspiration to the lost and forgotten who live in houses or apartments by themselves, hardly ever venturing out: the disabled.

This compliment of an attribution I only humbly accept because the work I do is from God. This year, I started my own ministry (Sundays and Thursdays, 1:00 pm PST on Facebook) because that is the door that opened for me. And another door has opened that I'll save as a surprise. Silly me, I always wanted to help run an orphanage, and I'm happy to be doing that in my life, as it brings more meaning to what is real, what is needed, and what is excess and ridiculously unimportant.

So yes, I will continue to do all these things since my near-death experience at Heaven's door, and hope you can join me to make a mighty giant fall by slinging a rock on his forehead. Women's Health, invisible illnesses, dysautonomia, fibromyalgia, Lyme's disease, EDS, CFS, TBI with DI, VAD, too many hysterectomies, the morcellator that spreads cancer during hysterectomy, Essure (ER) and young women who end up with a hysterectomy (or a perforated Fallopian tube or uterus) birth control device .... I list lots of them in my newest book, so that doctors alike can look at the patient presentation and maybe get a diagnosis. OR patients who have searched for a diagnosis for years and tears...they can see if maybe they can get a diagnosis, too. The Book? Archives of the Vagina (http//www.drmargaretaranda.tateauthor/other-works). Written to protect girls in puberty to women in hospice care, this 500+ page book will leave you laughing and crying as humor, stories, history going back to Aristotle, and medical facts surround you.

I want to do more. I live in a body that won't let me do everything that my mind wants to do. I used to chase the wind, laughing and chuckling at the flying leaves. I used to believe in the goodness of people, and just being on this list gives me more faith in God, and in human nature.

So humbly, I thank you, Dr. Pugliese MD for electing me into this list, and thank all the sick, disabled, depressed, suicidal, distressed, unimaginarily mistreated patients for letting me into their lives. There's nothing more that I can say except to encourage us all to STAY THE COURSE! FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!

Go from being a VICTIM to being a SURVIVOR to being a WARRIOR!

I know you all have WARRIOR blood in you, so SPEAK UP!

Self-educate, be aware, ask other women, search through social media,

and make it your BUSINESS to keep the one body you have alive and well.

I know you can do it.