‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Dr. Miranda Bailey Is The Doctor Undiagnosed Patients Need

I’d by no means associated so deeply to a TV character till Nina Sullivan (Bess Rous) appeared on Season 15 of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

“Unfortunately, we’ve exhausted every test that we can think of,” Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) advised Nina. “We’ve run out of tests.”

“Then find me a test. I can’t keep living like this. I can’t keep being told it’s in my head when I know that it’s not. I can’t keep being told that I’m crazy when I’m not crazy,” Nina responded.

As I watched Nina plead for medical assist, making an attempt to persuade medical doctors her phrases held true, it was as if I had been watching my very own nightmare replay earlier than me. For greater than a decade, I used to be advised I used to be exaggerating, that my situation was undiagnosable, and that I appeared wholesome and succesful regardless of the best way I felt. My phrases didn’t matter anymore as a result of every time I sat in an examination room, relaying my medical historical past and begging for assist, I ended up in the identical place: undiagnosed ― struggling to stroll and alone.

Approximately 30 million Americans expertise important well being issues that defy prognosis. Undiagnosed sufferers are sometimes met with resistance when lab work repeatedly fails to disclose a solution. Without a doctor main them, these sufferers push onward alone and with out the steering they so desperately want.

Having a doctor like Bailey may imply the distinction between entry to therapy or letting a progressive illness trigger irreversible harm. Bailey, with Dr. Jo Wilson’s (Camilla Luddington) assist, solved Nina’s medical thriller after she’d been gaslighted repeatedly. Every undiagnosed affected person wants a doctor like Bailey, in order that they, too, can have one other probability to dwell.

I bear in mind mendacity lifeless on the hallway ground as my physique surrendered to the mysterious illness depleting my power. I acquired a prognosis solely after combating for one. After 13 years, I met a neurologist who listened wholly, and a lumbar puncture lastly revealed that I’d been residing with a number of sclerosis for greater than a decade. On therapy for six years now, my power has improved, and I really feel alive once more. Like Bailey did for Nina, my neurologist gave me a second probability.

I additionally noticed myself in affected person Alicia Tatum (Rachel Nicks) in Season 6. In a flashback to 2003, Bailey was portrayed as an intern. During Alicia’s preliminary surgical procedure, the group found gallstones, and Dr. Nicole Baylow, Bailey’s supervisor, was fast guilty the discovering on a fatty food plan. Bailey, having taken the affected person’s full medical historical past, alerted her colleagues that Alicia was vegan, making her food plan an unlikely wrongdoer. A month later, after the group failed to supply an correct prognosis, Bailey recognized Alicia with appendicitis. As an undiagnosed affected person, I wanted a physician to concentrate to particulars — to hear — and to consider my phrases had been the important thing to a solution.

Often, after I cried, medical doctors thought of my emotional response motive to suspect my bodily complaints had been psychosomatic. Doctors selected to see my worry as a substitute of listening to that my legs weakened upon strolling, that ache radiated down my outer thighs, and that involuntary muscle actions occurred with out warning. They targeted on my nervousness and my tears. Bailey does simply the alternative: She reacts with compassion and doesn’t let her sufferers’ feelings cloud her judgment.

In Season 6, Amber (Austin Highsmith), a burn sufferer, was advised to stay optimistic. But Bailey gave her permission to cry as a result of she understands that tears are a pure response to underlying well being points, not a psychosomatic response to imaginative illnesses. I realized to cover my feelings for worry of being judged unfairly, however Bailey lets her sufferers course of grief with out judgment.

At the tip of Season 6, Bailey and Mary Portman (Mandy Moore) survived a mass taking pictures collectively. In Season 7, Mary died unexpectedly throughout a easy process, and Bailey wouldn’t surrender with out understanding why.

“Science is failing me. That I take personally. That I can’t accept,” she asserts.

Bailey’s dedication to her sufferers motivates her to help the pathologist after Mary’s inconclusive post-mortem. If each undiagnosed affected person had a physician unwilling to surrender with out a solution, the standing of the undiagnosed affected person wouldn’t be as frequent as it’s.

In Season 10, Bailey met Braden Morris (Armani Jackson), a toddler with an immune deficiency, extraordinarily weak to germs. Through analysis, Bailey found a solution to inactivate the HIV virus and use it to ship a therapy to restore immune system operate. When Braden’s dad and mom refused therapy, Bailey administered the virus with out consent, understanding it was his solely probability of survival.

“He was dying, and I created something out of thin air. I took a virus that kills into something that heals, and I saved his life,” Bailey defined to her husband. Saving Braden’s life was Bailey’s high precedence as a result of she treats her pediatric sufferers the best way she’d need her personal little one handled. It’s one other high quality that makes her an distinctive physician.

Bailey is just not solely the sort of physician unwilling to surrender on her sufferers, however she additionally aspires to form residents into medical doctors to do the identical. In Season 11, Wilson apologized for crying following a affected person’s dying.

“Don’t you apologize for caring about your patients. A lot of doctors aren’t willing to go all in. It hurts too much. But that’s what’s gonna make you such an excellent doctor,” Bailey responded.

I wanted a physician keen to go all in for 13 years; I looked for a doctor like Bailey.

In Season 13, Bailey acknowledges that she made a mistake pushing Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) apart and hiring Dr. Eliza Minnick (Marika Domińcyk) to show the residents. She realized there was extra to schooling than following protocols.

“This is not some factory that turns out surgical robots,” Bailey says. “We make doctors. Thinking, feeling, human doctors, and we will teach them right.” If each residency program had a pacesetter decided to form the subsequent technology of physicians into empathetic, humane practitioners, each undiagnosed affected person would have the physician they want.

Bailey finds herself on the opposite aspect of the doctor-patient equation in Season 14. Knowing the indicators of a coronary heart assault in ladies and recognizing them in herself, she checked in to a neighboring emergency room. In a state of affairs far too acquainted to my very own, a number of well being care suppliers tried to persuade Bailey that her signs had been psychosomatic, however she urged them to proceed the work-up. Then, in response, Dr. Maggie Pierce (Kelly McCreary) expressed her disgust over the resistance many ladies face in well being care settings.

“I am furious,” she says. “And I am grateful that Bailey fought for herself like she does for her patients every single day. And I am furious that she even had to.”

For greater than a decade, I fought for myself, too.

For each physician who didn’t consider me or gave up earlier than reaching a prognosis, Bailey is a reminder that compassionate physicians exist. She provides each affected person on an extended diagnostic journey hope that the physician who will ship a solution is on the horizon. She units a primary instance for each doctor at the moment caring for a affected person with a mysterious illness. “Grey’s Anatomy” has offered the undiagnosed neighborhood with a mannequin of every part to search for in a physician.

If each affected person residing with an undiagnosed illness had a doctor like Bailey, the well being care setting could be extra approachable for sufferers searching for a solution — and lots of the 30 million Americans at the moment residing and not using a prognosis might be given a second probability to dwell.