I had an interesting run-in with chronic (-ish) illness. I got some random flu-like virus in late 2019 (I don't think it was covid, although I was living in HK

I had an interesting run-in with chronic (-ish) illness. I got some random flu-like virus in late 2019 (I don't think it was covid, although I was living in HK at the time). Whatever it was, it really screwed me up and left me with a bunch of weird symptoms (e.g. dizziness/vertigo) that had me pretty incapacitated for a few months. Thankfully the symptoms abated eventually, but doctors couldn't really find anything and none of the diagnostic tests turned up anything that interesting. Ultimately they thought it was probably minor viral encephalitis, but the diagnostics for this are quite bad, so no confirmation either way. You can't really convince doctors that you're not the kind of person with a propensity for imagined symptoms (probably a lot of hypochondriacs tell them that), so there's not really anything you can say to argue when a doctor implies you're just imagining things. That and other experiences made me realize: A) diagnostic technology is really quite poor (e.g. at the time, only one lab (one of the UC schools, I forget which) was even theoretically capable of testing for encephalitic viruses outside of 2-3 very common ones, and all of the tests had ridiculous limitations on e.g. sensitivity window) B) most doctors really overestimate their own intelligence, and they act accordingly C) you and your friends/family are the only ones who (can afford to) actually care about and put serious effort into your medical outcomes. If you actually want to get good medical results, you basically just have to diagnose yourself and convince some doctor to go along with it without triggering their sense of superiority