Many times, in fact. When I was fifteen I suddenly developed pain in my neck. It ached constantly, and began cracking loud enough to make people jump. This pain spread into my back and by the time I was back at school, I was struggling to get through a whole day without having to go home to sleep as my fatigue was so great.

Before this pain started I was fit and well and could walk great distances. Over the next few years the pain spread into every part of my body, and my mobility began to decrease. I was struggling to walk around a large shop, then a small shop and my world got smaller.

During this time I was bounced around many medication professionals. Having never had anything major wrong with me before, I was under the impression a doctor would listen to my symptoms and then discuss what conditions could be causing it. Then they would carry out testing until it was narrowed down. Nothing of the sort happened.

My GP kept shrugging her shoulders. I had to look up specific tests and ask for them, even the most basic. I was sent to physiotherapists – a lot of them, none of which were helpful. One said, “You don’t appear to be screaming out in pain for treatment.” Like it was normal for someone with long-term pain to scream 24/7. I then was sent to rheumatologists. Their diagnosis was “likely not arthritis” which didn’t feel like a diagnosis at all. I kept pushing – I was having to use a walking stick to get around, then later a wheelchair. My joints hurt and cracked, and felt like they were out of place. The muscle spasms were relentless. Not one doctor I ever saw asked about my symptoms other than pain. Very quickly the suggestions began it was all in my head. I was sent to a pain psychologist and had a few sessions, before she concluded my coping skills were fine – I just didn’t know what was wrong and needed further investigations.

I then spent a few years being bounced between the two – rheumatology to psychology. Each disagreeing I fit under their services. After about six years my GP wrote again to rheumatology to ask for more help and to have a review of treatment options as I was getting much worse. The letter we got back said, “To further offer treatment options would medicalise her issues. She needs to see a psychiatrist.” I can’t tell you how much this letter devastated me. I’d gone from a perfectly healthy teenager to struggling to physically function. I was in constant and severe pain, with injury after injury on top. I was having to use a wheelchair to be able to leave the house. I began to doubt myself – was it in my head?

At some point I saw a Pain Consultant. A rude, dismissive sort. He told me I just needed to fight through the pain, that anyone could if they tried hard enough. (I didn’t have the energy to point out that if people could ignore severe pain his job wouldn’t even exist). He eventually agreed to send me for an MRI for the first time to prove nothing was wrong. The MRI showed a great deal of degeneration, disc bulges, narrowing and cysts. He left before the results came back.

Then after eight and a half years I finally got my answers. A series of events led me to look up the condition Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Not only did it fit everything I had, there were so many other things I’d ignored as just assumed were part of me that were actually down to EDS. My GP referred me to the top specialist to see if I did have it, and the difference in that appointment compared to any other I’d seen was immense. He asked detailed questions starting from when I was born. He connected all the dots, and was so thorough and diagnosed me definitively with EDS.

Knowing what it was made such a difference. It’s incurable, but at least I know. I get so angry at all those awful doctors who took one look at a young teenager and jumped straight to psychosomatic with no effort. It’s a pattern I see so often – particularly with women, but many have fallen victim to this.

Sometimes it isn’t the most obvious answer, and that’s why it’s so important to look at the whole picture rather than one single source of pain. The condition on average takes 10–20 years to diagnose, and many are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed who have it. It’s just not good enough.

I’m left with a great deal of medical anxiety, having been treated so badly by so many I saw over those years.

As I look back on my education, I realize I got a wonderful jump-start at Columbia University. I also realize that in the 4 years I spent there, I learned a lot. It probably adds up to about 0.5% of what I know now.

The university is only the beginning of your education. A great university gives you a great beginning. But a head-start is less important than endurance. Slow and steady wins the race. If you keep learning, every day, every week, soon whatever you “missed” at the university will fade into nothingness.

When I graduated from Columbia, I was annoyed that the ceremony was not called a graduation, but was called a “commencement”. Hey, I wanted recognition for the four years of work I had struggled through!

In retrospect, that was exactly the right name.

As you grow older, you’ll see many of your friends and colleagues become couch potatoes, with their bodily health and strength gradually going downhill. Don’t let it happen to you. But far worse, their brains will also go downhill. Not forced to learn, they will stop learning. Don’t let it happen to you!

Every year of your life, learn more than you did last year. It gets easier to do this as you get older, because the main thing you learned in college was how to learn. And you can keep getting better at it.

The key to learning is recognizing how much fun it is. When you enjoy something, you learn without effort. In college, I had no interest in history, little in world affairs; now those subjects fascinate me. I find almost all of life fascinating.

Forgive me for ending with a cliche:
This is the first day of the rest of your life.

Barbecue Beef Roast

Ingredients

• 1 (2 – 2 1/2 pound) beef chuck roast
• 1/4 cup barbecue sauce (I prefer Sweet Baby Ray’s)
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder

Instructions

1. Place the roast in the slow cooker (slice in half if using a 4-quart slow cooker).
2. Whisk together the remaining ingredients and pour over the roast. Cook on LOW for 6 hours.
3. Remove the roast and shred with two forks (it just falls apart), place in a serving dish and ladle some of the juice over the top before serving.

"Western elites are stubbornly working to 'punish' Russia, isolate and weaken it, supplying the Kiev authorities with money and arms.

They have imposed almost 16,000 unilateral illegitimate sanctions against our country.

They are threatening to dismember our country.

They are illegally trying to appropriate our foreign assets.

They are turning a blind eye to the resurgence of Nazism and to Ukraine-sponsored terrorist attacks in our territory.

We are seeking a comprehensive, sustainable and just settlement of this conflict through peaceful means.

We are open to a dialogue on Ukraine, but such negotiations must take into account the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including Russia's.

They must also involve a substantive discussion on global stability and security guarantees for Russia's opponents and, naturally, for Russia itself.

Needless to say, these must be reliable guarantees.

That is where the main problem is, since we are dealing with states whose ruling circles seek to substitute the world order based on international law with an 'order based on certain rules,' which they keep talking about but which no one has ever seen, no one has agreed to, and which, apparently, tend to change depending on the current political situation and interests of those who invent these rules."