"When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."
Medical school students are frequently taught this phrase in an effort to prevent them from making an incorrect diagnosis of rare disease and to instead look for a more common explanation. A medical zebra is the rarity, and since EDS is a rare syndrome, EDS has adopted the zebra as it's mascot. Sometimes the explanation is a zebra; no two zebras have identical strips just as no two patients with EDS are identical. Each and every individual with EDS has different symptoms and experiences, which only adds to the difficulty of getting a diagnosis. It takes those who suffer from EDS an average of 19 years to even receive a diagnosis because doctors don’t expect someone who looks so healthy to have it, think that patients are too young or too old to be having so many problems, or think that EDS is too rare to be the root of the patients’ problems. Due to how silenced and misunderstood this syndrome is, even for medical professionals, it must be emphasized:
Though they may be rare...
ZEBRAS DO EXIST
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