What Frida Knew: Pain, Humanity, and the Medicine We Must Remember

By: Dahlia Chavez

Frida Kahlo never used the word fibromyalgia, yet her life–marked by unrelenting pain—mirrors the stories of so many patients today. She painted what medicine often fails to name: the silent, chronic ache that isn’t always visible, measurable, or easily explained. Her body told a story medicine wasn’t equipped to hear.

As a medical student living with chronic illness, I see this disconnect often, from both sides of the healthcare system. I’ve experienced delayed diagnoses, vague answers, and raised eyebrows when I advocate for myself. But I’ve also seen how clinicians struggle, wanting to help but operating within a system that rewards speed, certainty, and documentation over presence and understanding.

Conditions like fibromyalgia are chronically underfunded, under-taught, and under-validated. Diagnoses like fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions remain shrouded in controversy—not because the pain isn’t real, but because our systems haven’t caught up.

Take endometriosis as an example. It affects 1 in 10 people with uteruses, yet it often takes nearly a decade to diagnose due to symptom variability and the widespread normalization of pain. The burden is even heavier for people of color, who face systemic disparities in care across nearly every condition—not just chronic pain.

Even when a name is finally given to the pain, too many patients are left without meaningful treatment options. If the so-called “gold standard” fails, patients are often met with uncertainty, dismissal, or fear—not the compassion or curiosity that healing requires. Instead of collaborative problem-solving, they receive labels. Instead of care, they receive doubt.

But pain doesn’t end at the point of diagnosis. And healing doesn’t come from protocols alone. When we reduce patients to checklists or silence their stories because we don’t yet have the data to support them, we miss what’s most essential: their humanity.

The truth is, every patient is a person. And so is every doctor. We are not on opposite sides. We are on the same side of the exam room, facing uncertainty together. However, the culture of medicine—especially now, in a political climate that thrives on division—can cause us to forget that. It can create a sense of “us” and “them,” implying that some patients are more credible than others.

But suffering doesn’t follow political lines. It doesn’t care about your insurance status, your last name, or your zip code. It shows up in all of us. And when we remember that, we start to see pain with more empathetic eyes—not as a problem to manage, but a human experience to respond to.

We begin to ask different questions—not just What’s your diagnosis?, but How has this pain shaped your life? We move beyond treating symptoms to also confronting the stigma. We stop offering bandages for systemic wounds and start addressing the deeper gaps in research, access, and care.

It starts by listening—with empathy, not assumptions. By validating each person's experience. And by committing not just to naming the condition, but to helping manage it with care, curiosity, and respect.

When we forget we’re all human, medicine becomes mechanical. But when we remember we’re in this together—patient and doctor, student and teacher, community and clinician—we start to create something better.

Frida Kahlo didn’t need permission to tell her story, but she also shouldn’t have had to fight so hard to be believed. Her art reminds us that patients have always been narrating their pain—we just haven’t always listened.

Now, more than ever, we need to listen—with science, yes, but also with humility and humanity. Healing begins when we stop viewing patients as problems and start seeing them as people—just like us.