I am the oldest daughter of three girls. We were raised by a single mother who made the hardest decision of her life when she chose to remain in the United States after her divorce. Our entire family, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, lived in Mexico. We had no one here. But staying meant opportunity. It meant a future she couldn’t guarantee in Mexico. So she stayed. And from that moment on, it was just the four of us, my mother, my two sisters, and me, navigating a country where she didn’t fully speak the language, building a life from scratch.

My mother worked wherever she could, in a tortilla factory, cleaning offices, and caring for other people’s children while raising us independently. I didn’t realize it then, but now I see how much she carried. Holidays were spent together in our little mobile home. We couldn’t visit Mexico while waiting for our permanent residency, so we made our own traditions, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, just us.

When I enrolled in nursing school, I promised myself I would graduate and care for my mother the way she had cared for us. She used to work at Walmart, and I remember her sending me what little she could to help with my school supplies. When I got my first nursing paycheck, I called her excited. Later, I took her to New York, London, and Italy. Places she had only dreamed of. I bought her a house. I paid off her car. I wanted her to see that her sacrifices were not in vain.

In 2022, she started getting sick.

It began with a rash. Then arm pain. Between February and May, we visited doctor after doctor, switched specialists, and begged for answers. We were repeatedly told the same thing: “Dermatomyositis doesn’t cause pain.” Her symptoms were dismissed over and over again. But I knew something wasn’t right. I had Googled everything. Her symptoms matched Dermatomyositis exactly, but no one listened.

She was finally diagnosed with Dermatomyositis (DM) in June 2022, months after we began pleading with providers to test her. By that point, she could barely move. The first time my sister had to help her shower, my mother broke down. She couldn’t lift her arms to wash her hair. It wasn’t just physical pain. It was the pain of losing her independence, her strength, her dignity.

One ER doctor told us, “I don’t mean to sound harsh, but unless your mother is dying, we really can’t do much for her.” He sent us home with Tylenol.

DM eventually took everything from her. Her ability to eat, walk, and speak. She was bedridden, with a feeding tube in place. And in November 2022, she passed away surrounded by us, her daughters.

DM is a rare autoimmune disease that causes inflammation of the muscles and skin. It can lead to weakness, fatigue, pain, swallowing difficulties, and organ involvement. It’s often misunderstood or misdiagnosed, especially in communities of color, among women, and among people who don’t speak English fluently. My mother faced all of that. And we, her daughters, had to fight a system that didn’t believe her.