The Beauty of the Zebra

by Holly (she/her) Missouri, United States

The boy met the zebra and was puzzled.

Zebras don’t exist. Well I mean, they do but surely this boy could not be seeing one before him.

No, that couldn’t be the case. He circled the funny looking horse with stripes and shook his head again and again. 

No, surely it couldn’t be.

And slowly, with each passing word of disbelief and shake of his head the stripes on the zebra began to blend into a gray hue and dust covered each line. A blur on the zebra's skin, but the boy was content with the image he’d conjured.

Comfort in the familiar. No zebras allowed. And so the gray horse followed behind the boy, though unsure of herself. With each step she struggled but was reassured that it was normal, for she was simply a gray horse.

Until one day, she saw another zebra with stripes just like her memory.

She shook and shook until the gray dust she was covered in blew into the wind revealing once again her beautiful stripes.

She was a zebra. Wild and free. Regardless of what the boy said she could be.

A medical zebra is in reference to someone with a rare disease or condition. Doctors are taught when they hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. And that is great for all the common medical conditions (horses) out there! But medical zebras with rare conditions do exist, and to pretend we don’t is to put us into simple boxes to make sense of our symptoms.

This is a blockade to our care and treatment as medical zebras with rare diagnosis’ that often need more complex treatment.

I am a proud Medical Zebra and an advocate for change and fighting for diagnosis and treatment.

Holly @chronic_zebras