When I was six years old, my father asked my first grade teacher if we could have an extra set of class textbooks（教科书） to keep at home. The reason being if we had these at home, I could get ahead in school from doing extra coursework on the weekends. That's right. And to me, this was a perfectly normal weekend activity, mostly because I was blissfully unaware（不知道的） that other kids my age were probably watching Saturday morning cartoons on their couch. As a child of immigrant（移民的） parents, I was taught that how hard you worked and the sacrifices（牺牲） you made directly correlated（使相互关联） with an outcome（结果）. And that in order for me to guarantee（保证） my success in this country, I didn't just need to work hard, but extra hard to prove my place here.

  So I did that. I became this high achiever that got straight A's, perfect attendance（出席人数）, won local and state science fairs and multiple（多重的） art competitions. I went on to finish medical school, residency（住处） and fellowship（团体） to become a pediatric rheumatologist. The type of doctor that treats autoimmune conditions like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis（关节炎）. Up until this point in my life, being a go-getter had really worked in my favor. If there was a roadblock, I found（找到） solutions to move right past them.

  And then I became a patient myself. My primary care doctor had wanted me to go see an adult rheumatologist for some joint（共同的） pains（痛） that I was having in my hands. And so I went and as I sat on that cold exam table in an oversized hospital gown, my hands started to shake. And I got nauseous the moment the rheumatologist took a second look at my knuckles（关节） and wrists（腕）. She took a deep breath in, looked me in the eyes and uttered（发出） the four words that changed my life forever. "You have rheumatoid arthritis."

  A million thoughts of disbelief and confusion（混乱） fled（ 逃走） through my mind as I tried to process（加工） the irony of this whole situation. I mean, I could have had any one of the hundreds of diseases out there. Why did it have to be the one that I was an expert in? As a rheumatologist, I can diagnose（诊断） arthritis（关节炎） in my sleep. So how did I miss it in myself? I think part of the dissonance came from not allowing my mind to even entertain an illness like this, because it would change everything.

  Having a chronic（ 慢性的） disease would mean learning（学习） how to give myself injections（注射）. It would mean being immunosuppressed. It would mean thinking twice about where I traveled or who I was around. It would be a roulette of having to see multiple doctors, taking time off to go see those doctors, getting MRIs, IV pokes（刺）, joint（共同的） injections（注射）, and dealing with the annoying side effects of medications（药物） like fatigue（疲乏） and hair loss and nausea（反胃）. These were things that I ordered, not actually did. For the first time, I got a taste of my own medicine when I realized that this is exactly what I put my patients through.

  And for the first time, I finally understood my patients and their pain points. As I lay there that night, staring（ 盯着看） at the ceiling, the reality of my diagnosis（诊断） and what it would mean started to sink in.