Opinion: The day I ‘declared myself’ — and was in surgery just hours later

I was about to begin rounds in the intensive care unit when I bumped into the liver specialist on call. My team had asked her about a patient with advanced liver disease who was not responding to treatment and was quickly deteriorating.

“If she’s infected, she will declare herself,” the hepatologist said, evoking a centuries-old diagnostic concept in medicine. It presumes that a sick-enough patient will eventually develop symptoms so distinct and profound that she or he will “declare” the mysterious illness at play, making it possible to readily identify the culprit disease.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that phrase would apply to me in just a few hours.

For about six weeks, my body had been signaling that something was awry, though I misinterpreted what it was telling me. I was once again overtaken by insomnia, which I