
For years, Chloe Sargeant felt as if she was shouting into a void. Desperate to be heard, to be taken seriously.
Doctors dismissed her as "hysterical". "Overdramatic". Told her it was in her head.
Meanwhile, sometimes her pain was so severe she couldn't leave the house.
It took more than a decade for Chloe, now 33, to finally get an answer: fibromyalgia.
"The way I describe it is like as if you've had a really severe flu and that aching feeling you get throughout your entire body, that's how I feel every day," she told Mamamia.
Chloe recently shared her story on SBS Insight during an episode exploring invisible illness. And that's exactly what fibromyalgia is — a chronic condition you can't see, but one that affects every part of a person's life.
Chloe Sargeant on the cost of invisible illness. Post continues after video.
Chloe's journey to her diagnosis was "deeply distressing".
There's only so many times you can be told, "You're fine," when you know something is wrong.
"It's exhausting," she said.
"We're still called hysterical. I keep going to doctors and saying, 'No, something is definitely wrong. I know that nothing showed up in my blood, but something is wrong' and just being told 'no' over and over again.