Symptom Bingo: The Game Nobody Asked to Play

Antonia Kenny
Jun 18
3 min read

By Antonia @ Unremarkable MePublished June 2025

You haven’t truly lived with chronic illness until you’ve played Symptom Bingo.

There are no rules. No prizes. Just one ever-shifting board, and the only thing you need to play is a body that’s decided to behave like a toddler with access to a chemistry set.

And oh—once you start? You never really stop. I used to joke that my EDS diagnosis came with a side of plot twists. One day it’s my shoulder dislocating while reaching for the kettle. The next, I’m stuck in bed with tachycardia from brushing my teeth. B7: Breathless. I19: Intestinal mutiny. O66: Organs throwing tantrums again.

Patterns That Never Behave

Like many of us with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and its entourage of co-conditions (hi MCAS, and your best mate Dysautonomia), I tried the symptom tracker apps. For a while.

But there’s a limit to how many times you can log “weird burning sensation in left ankle, again??” before it starts to feel like a diary written by an unreliable narrator who might also be on fire.

For example, last summer I woke up with what felt like a pulled rib. No trauma, no movement, just—hello, pain. Within 12 hours, it had escalated to muscle spasms that mimicked a cardiac event. NHS 111 sent me straight to A&E. It wasn’t a heart attack. It was a subluxed rib.Classic EDS party trick. G58.

But my favourite round?“Is it a new symptom, or did I forget this one existed?”

Because with enough conditions stacked up, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether something is new, old, or just making a comeback tour.

The Bonus Rounds

Symptom Bingo is not just physical. It’s cognitive chaos and emotional whiplash. I’ve cried over leg cramps that felt like medieval torture devices. I’ve also laughed through bladder dysfunction while joking about adult nappies in a Tesco aisle.

Some bonus rounds I never signed up for:

“Is this MCAS or just a weird allergy?”
“Will this rash vanish or demand a dermatologist?”
“How many doctors will it take to confirm I’m not imagining it?”

Each one hits differently. And spoiler alert: they never come with a helpful pop-up explanation.

“That’s Not Typical for Your Condition.”

The line that launched a thousand eye rolls.

I once described my dysautonomia symptoms to a doctor who said, “Well, it’s not textbook…”And I thought—neither is living like this, darling, but here we are.

It’s staggering how often women with chronic illness are dismissed, especially when symptoms don’t follow textbook patterns. A study in the Journal of Women’s Health showed that women’s pain is consistently underestimated and under-treated compared to men’s [1].Another study on EDS diagnostic delay reports an average of 10–12 years to diagnosis [2].

So yes—when the doctor says your jaw shouldn’t dislocate from eating toast?Just mark your square. You’re playing a more advanced version than they studied.

The Mental Weight of “Maybe”

Living with unpredictable symptoms means constantly second-guessing your own body.It’s exhausting. Physically, yes—but also mentally. The mental load includes:

Deciding if it’s worth calling a doctor again.
Managing guilt when plans fall through.
Making spreadsheets for hospital bags because surprise admissions are a thing now.

The unpredictability of symptoms leaves little room for confidence. Or routine. Or pants that zip.

But it does build one thing: an absolutely absurd sense of humour.Honestly? Some days, it’s the only tool left in the box.

Final Thoughts (and a Slightly Bent Mic Drop)

We don’t play Symptom Bingo for fun. We play it to survive, adapt, and make sense of bodies that forgot how to behave “normally.”We play because laughter gives shape to the chaos.And we play because in a world that often dismisses us, naming the weirdness is a way of reclaiming it.

So if today brought: