The Woman Behind Nammu

I am twenty-five years old, sitting at a table with a stack of medical records I requested myself — from a hospital that examined me when I was six years old. No one sent me here. I am here because nineteen years of unexplained exhaustion and dismissals have finally made me decide to investigate my own body as if I were the last person left who might actually try. And then I find it. Six words. Buried so deep in the file that it takes me a moment to understand what I am looking at. Thalassemia. A genetic blood disorder. Diagnosed at age six. Never communicated to my parents. Never followed up. Filed, and forgotten. This is the story of what I did with that.