Electrolytes Will Solve Everything All of the Time

Written by Jamie Diamond / Illustrated by Derek

For over three years, I’ve been having mysterious, unexplainable cramping in my right leg and foot. I visited what feels like a million (but what was probably about 10) doctors of all kinds. I got a bunch of different tests. Every single person on the planet, including one of my MRI technicians, told me to just “drink electrolytes” and “stretch” and “eat more bananas.”

(Unrelatedly, I dislike bananas unless they’re in banana bread form.)

This past February, a neurologist ordered an MRI of my lower back, suspecting I might have sciatica or something similar, and told me the results came back normal. When speaking to the medical assistant charged with giving me the results, I asked her, “So is there anything you can think of that might help me? Another doctor I can go to?” She basically said, “No, you are shit out of luck — sorry.”

I decided to see a new rheumatologist, who looked at the SAME MRI RESULTS that the neurologist did, and immediately said, “Oh, I see the problem, the neurologist didn’t catch this?”

She then said that a few of my spinal discs were PROTRUDING (WTF) and compressing a nerve that runs through my leg, which is very likely the cause of the persistent crampy feeling. And she started shitting on neurologists. I thanked her and told her that she was the first person in years of doctors’ visits to give me a concrete answer, and she said she didn’t even do anything: she was just reading the results.

Why is “reading the results of an MRI” such a high bar??!!!

This was written by Jamie Diamond and illustrated by Derek