Within Range, Out of Reach (Part One)

When the numbers say you’re fine but your body says you’re not.

It started with my hair.

Not a handful all at once.

Just enough in the comb to make me stop and think,

This is not normal.

I did what they say to do when you care about your health.

I got the job with good insurance.

I worked at the School of Pharmacy, surrounded by people in white coats and long titles.

I listened to the talks. I read the articles.

I followed directions.

I did everything they tell you to do.

I got bloodwork.

I saw specialists.

I changed my diet.

I went to an allergist.

I went to a dermatologist.

I let someone biopsy my scalp.

I sat on paper-thin covered exam tables in paper-thin gowns while people glanced at charts and said the same sentence in different fonts:

“Your numbers are within range.”

Within range.

Still not okay.

My vitamin D wasn’t just low, it was severely deficient.

My thyroid numbers stayed in that gray area—“a little off, but still technically normal.”

That word technically has done a lot of damage.

Every time something felt off, I went looking for another answer.

Every time, I was handed a range.

No one ever said, “You’ve been complaining about this for years; let’s really connect the dots.

”It was more like, “You’re in range, so we’ll watch it.”

Watch it do what?

Grow?

They tell you to be proactive.

Catch things early.

Exercise.

Take your vitamins.

Ask questions.

They show you commercials of smiling women jogging in slow motion with their prescription of the month.

They don’t show you the part where you sit in your car after an appointment, staring at a lab report and wondering why your body is screaming while the paper says you’re fine.

Especially as a woman.

Especially as a middle-aged woman.

Especially as a Black woman who is not quite at menopause, stuck in a word nobody really explained—perimenopause—while your body throws signals like confetti.

There’s a whole new vocabulary for what women go through,

but not enough doctors who are willing to translate it with you.

I kept saying, “Something is wrong.”

Not in a whisper. Not hinting.

Out loud!

My hair.

My skin.

My energy.

My breathing.

My weight.

My vitamin levels.

My spirit knew.

And still, appointment after appointment, I heard:

“You’re within range.”

Within range.

Out of reach.

Out of reach of a doctor who would look at me—not just the chart.

Out of reach of someone who would say,

“Her numbers may be normal on paper, but they are not normal for her.”

Because my body is not a template.

My numbers as a Black woman might not match the textbook “average woman” they built the range around.

My story sits inside those numbers, but the story was not being read.

Years went by—ten, to be exact.

Meanwhile, my thyroid was growing like nobody told it the meeting was over.

Quiet, steady, unbothered by their “watchful waiting.”

Tripling in size.

Growing nodules big enough to press on my breathing, my voice, my comfort.

Now here I am.

Scheduling a full thyroid removal.

Planning to have lymph nodes taken out too, just in case.

Waiting to find out—two days before Christmas—if there’s cancer hiding in the tissue they pull from my neck.

Two days before Christmas, when people are busy baking cookies, wrapping gifts and singing carols, my night will be silent—voice thin as ice and pathology results hanging in the air—as I try to make peace with a body that feels like it’s been warning me for a decade.

And I am scared.

I am also mad!

Because I can’t help but trace the line backwards:

If someone had reacted when my thyroid was “a little low but still in range”…

If someone had said, “Let’s monitor this closely for you, not for the average person on this chart”…

If someone had connected my vitamin D, my hair loss, my fatigue, my breathing, my weight shifts, my skin changes, my symptoms…

Maybe my thyroid wouldn’t be this big.

Maybe the nodules wouldn’t be this large.

Maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here rehearsing the words “thyroid cancer” in my head so it doesn’t knock the wind out of me if they say it.

You start to ask yourself hard questions:

If nobody’s fighting for me, then who is?

How many women are sitting in cars right now with lab results that say “normal,”

while their bodies are waving red flags?

Let me be clear:

I am not writing this because I want anyone to panic.

I’m writing this because I want us to pay attention.

To our bodies.

To our numbers.

To the way we get talked over and brushed aside.

There are women—especially Black women, especially women in that middle stretch between “young” and “old”—who are living in this gap:

Within range.

Out of reach.

Out of reach of doctors who take the time to ask,

“How long has this been going on?”

“What else are you feeling?”

“What does off feel like in your body?”

Instead, we get:

“Lose some weight.”

“Stress can do that.”

“We’ll recheck it next year.”

Next year becomes ten.

Part one of this story isn’t wrapped in a neat little bow.

I’m not on the other side yet.

I’m somewhere in the middle—prepping for surgery, waiting on answers, holding both fear and faith in the same tired hands.

All I know is this:

My body was telling the truth long before my labs did.

I listened.

I asked.

I pushed.

But I still ended up here, and I don’t want another woman to be this alone in the in-between.

So, if you’re reading this and something in your body has been whispering,

and the chart keeps trying to gaslight you into accepting “within range,

”I want you to know: you are not crazy, dramatic, or “too much” for wanting more than a shrug and a printout.

You are the one living in that body.

You sleep in it.

You wake up in it.

You feel every quiet shift before a lab ever picks it up.

You deserve a doctor who treats that as data too.

This is part one.

The part where I say out loud what I wish somebody had said to me ten years ago:

“Within range” is not the whole story.

Listen to your body.

And don’t let anybody make you feel like you’re asking for too much when you ask to be heard.

@SpokenByLeslie