09/08/2026
Another update on Ruby Hill’s story.
Ruby was diagnosed with hEDS and gastroparesis two days before she died.
Two days.
That detail makes this story even harder to comprehend.
We are so used to seeing medicine portrayed as this relentless pursuit of answers. The patient is deteriorating, so the doctors keep digging. They order the tests. They call in specialists. They get the interns and residents researching through the night. They look at the rare possibilities. They connect the dots. They do everything they can to understand what is happening.
And eventually, they find the answer.
Reality can look very different.
Sometimes it is simply, “We don’t know.”
And then, “Go home.”
As if the universe will somehow take care of the rest.
The information is out there. The research exists. The conditions exist. The diagnostic criteria exist. It may take time, curiosity, collaboration and a willingness to look beyond the obvious, but the knowledge is there.
Ruby was not asking medicine to perform a miracle.
She needed someone to keep looking.
She needed someone to recognise that a 23-year-old who was becoming profoundly unwell and unable to maintain adequate nutrition was not a problem that could simply be sent home.
And this happened in an era of modern medicine, where new discoveries are being published every single day.
So yes, I am angry.
Because how many young women have to deteriorate before “we don’t know” stops being the end of the conversation?
How many have to become dangerously malnourished, disabled or completely debilitated before someone decides that the uncertainty itself is reason to investigate harder?
Ruby’s diagnosis came two days before her death.
Two days.
Imagine what might have happened if that same determination to find an answer had started months earlier.
We cannot accept this as the norm.
At 23, Ruby Hill starved to death. A missed diagnosis nine months before raises deep questions about the medical establishment.
