The Game With Missing Pieces - Diary Poetry Shard

The Game With Missing Pieces

My daughter runs a marathon every morning  

before she even leaves the house—  
not a physical marathon,  
not a metaphorical one,  
but an illness marathon  
built from PMDD, menopause, and now Hashimoto’s.

Dropped into chemical menopause — then menopause — by twenty nine,  
we were left to gather the pieces:  
fighting for HRT,  
fighting the NHS rules,  
fighting the silence between departments,  
fighting contamination, dismissal, delay.  

Passed back and forth between NHS and private,  
no closer to help,  
no one taking responsibility.
And when the truth finally surfaced—  
an autoimmune disorder she “must have carried,”  
a story rewritten after the fact—  
she was already exhausted from surviving.

Now every day is another marathon  
while the thyroid waits to wake.  
How is it fair to lose so much life twice—  
first to PMDD,  
then to the fallout of the fix?

It feels like a game she never chose:  
each time she learns the level,  
someone reaches in  
and removes another piece she needs to keep going—  
and still expects her to play.

Footnote - I wrote this 21/04/26 after hours spent cross referencing her illnesses and why she's so ill at the moment - because she currently has no specialist responsible for her.