The doctor is here now. Matthew Light, MD, pops onscreen in his baby-blue T-shirt beneath a cardigan. He’s 42, with hair graying on the sides, a narrow nose, thick dark eyebrows. Patients from all walks of life log on from living rooms, kitchens, sofas, beds. Some are at home with their cameras off, while others rally a week’s worth of energy to be here in person on this frosty winter night, in a conference room at Colorado’s UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies, attending this rare kind of support group led by Dr. Light.

There is an understanding among them, a camaraderie. They know Dr. Light is like them. And it is not easy right now to be them. He gets it. Everyone here gets it. What it’s like to be doubted by friends and loved ones. To have their symptoms disregarded by strangers or misdiagnosed by doctors. How brain fog can submerge the mind some days, thoughts sloshing around in a murky soup. He endures the fatigue, understands how it comes in spurts and hits like a tsunami in the early afternoon. It is a weighted sled he cannot stop pushing. Like all of them, he desperately wants to feel better.