A case of ... what?

Recently I was staying with relatives, which gave me the chance to read the New York Times in print. It felt old-timey. I chanced upon an article in Lisa Sanders's Cases series, whose tropes can be summarized as follows:

1. Woman faints.

2. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong with her.

3. Bad Doctor says it's all in her head:

A neurologist in New York carefully examined her and her now thick chart and pronounced definitively that there was nothing wrong with her and that she should try to relax and maybe take up yoga.

4. Good Doctor notices a few key features and makes the diagnosis:

Ledereich watched as the patient calmly sat up. “I know what you’ve got!” he told her excitedly. Her sudden collapse looked as if a switch had been thrown and all her muscles just turned off. Ledereich realized that although it looked like syncope, it wasn’t; she hadn’t actually lost consciousness. What she probably had, Ledereich told her, was something called cataplexy, and that meant that she also had narcolepsy.

So far so good. But the treatment didn't cure the attacks:

But for reasons that neither the patient nor her doctors understand, after about six weeks, [the fainting spells] returned. At first, just occasionally. Then almost daily.

Thereafter she is left to do (more or less) what the Bad Doctor suggested: integrate her new diagnosis into her life.

The patient has learned to cope with her unusual condition; she no longer drives. And when she feels the warning signs, she tries to alert those around her to tell them not to worry. She’s part of a small community, andby now, most know her well enough not to call 911.

There are implications left unexplored here. First: that diagnoses can be partially but not entirely therapeutic. As Up To Date says about cataplexy, "these symptoms are often improved by medications." Often, but not always.

Second, that so much hinges on how the diagnosis is conveyed. Bad Doctor indicated that the woman affected with cataplexy "should just relax" - an abrupt and unhelpful direction, but not, for all that, unfounded. There is a connection between anxiety and cataplexy (and other sleep disorders) remarked upon in the literature.

Finally, a question is left unanswered (and unasked) at the end of the piece. What does the patient know that she has? Does she identify with her diagnosis of cataplexy in a way in which she wouldn't identify with a diagnosis of anxiety or other psychiatric disorder? Does the partial failure of GBH to treat her cataplexy at all detract from her trust/confidence in the diagnosis? In short, what does the patient think of all this?