I didn’t know it at the time, but last July was full of a bunch of “last time” experiences in my life. You always think there will be more; you have every reason to believe that the future holds nothing but incredible things for you. You never imagine that something like this will happen to you. But sometimes it does, and it did for me.

Last July was the last month I would spend as a healthy, happy, normal college girl. It was the last month I would spend as an on-campus college student. The last month where I could go on spontaneous adventures with my friends and stay out all night. Really, the last month I would be able to do anything spontaneously at all. July held the last times I would go hiking and swimming and walking without putting myself in danger. The last month where my biggest concerns consisted of passing my classes and making new friends. July was the last month I would ever spend feeling normal. (If only I could have somehow known what was coming, and more fully enjoyed the life I was living!)

Then along came August, and nothing in my life has ever been (or ever will be) the same. In August of 2015, I suddenly and shockingly became extremely ill within a very short period of time. The summer break I had been anticipating spending at the beach was instead spent in the hospital. The exciting trips I planned on taking were replaced with trips in the ambulance to the ER and to a million different doctors' offices.

Just a few short weeks after the end of an amazing summer semester at school, I began to pass out at random times, with no warning. Weird, but didn’t really feel like a big deal. I didn’t think too much of it at first. And then it started happening a lot. Without any warning at all, I would just randomly pass out as I was walking or standing. Sometimes I would be in the middle of a sentence when it happened. And then it got even worse. I was passing out every single time I would try to stand up. Literally. Every. Single. Time. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before, and had absolutely no idea what was happening to me. I think I probably hold some kind of record for the amount of times I have passed out (The Guinness Book of World Records should seriously hit me up). I kind of felt like some sort of sideshow act when my doctors would have me try to stand, and consequently watch me punch the floor with my face. My body was covered in bruises and cuts from all of the falls I took. Due to the dangers of constantly losing consciousness without any warning, I had to be put in a wheelchair. I was no longer able to stand up at all, ever. Doctors were running every test imaginable, and mentioning things like brain tumors and heart conditions. However, the test results were not bringing us any closer to diagnosing my bizarre condition. Safe to say, I was pretty freaked out.

By this point, you’re probably curious as to what the heck happened to me. So was I. I lived in a constant state of confusion and fear. Fear that I would never walk again, never return to college, never get married, never get to follow any of my dreams. I didn’t know if my condition was something that would soon take my life, or if I would suffer with it for another 70 years. And I don’t know which one scared me worse. I hoped every single morning that when I woke up it would somehow just go away. I was so disappointed and angry that I would not be healthy enough to attend my study abroad semester in London as I had been looking forward to for so long. I missed college and all of my friends. I missed laughing over inside jokes and singing loudly to music in the car. I missed my old life, and mourned its loss. In many ways, a version of me died last August.

I’ll fast-forward through the next few months of my life, months spent too sick and weak to leave my bed. Months spent too sick to eat. Months with crippling depression. I had lost all of my independence. Not only was I wheelchair bound, but I literally had to be carried from my wheelchair into my hospital bed or into the car. I quickly became rather hopeless that I would never figure out what was wrong with me. I had 50 different doctors telling me 50 different things. Some thought I had a undetectable seizure disorder or an invisible tumor, others thought I was legit crazy. In summary, the fall of 2015 was a pretty crappy time for me. If time travel ever becomes a thing, you can bet your life that I would never revisit that time period.

But just as I lost all of my hope of ever living a normal life again, I found a doctor who had just read a case study of a girl from a different country who had very similar symptoms as I did (a huge miracle when I think about it now). When this doctor met me, he decided to run the same test on me that had been run on the girl in the case study he read. It was called an active stand test and tilt table test with a beat-to-beat blood pressure monitor. The day of this test changed my life yet again, but this time in a positive way. This test showed that upon standing, my blood pressure dropped very low, very fast and that my heart rate skyrocketed. This dramatic drop in blood pressure occurred so quickly that my previous doctors could not catch it on a normal blood pressure cuff. That was why I was passing out! For the first time after months of confusion and fear, I finally knew what was happening inside my body.

After analyzing the data from this test, my doctor was able to diagnose me with a unique form of dysautonomia. For those of you who have never heard of it (probably all of you), dysautonomia is basically an umbrella term that covers different conditions in which the autonomic nervous system does not work properly. So there’s your answer to the “what the heck is wrong with this girl?” question we both know you have been asking. My autonomic nervous system doesn’t work the way it should. It doesn’t regulate my heart rate or blood pressure correctly. It also doesn’t regulate digestion, sleep/wake cycles, temperature, or hunger normally either. These autonomic failures result in a great variety of debilitating symptoms. The good news was that once I had a diagnosis, we could finally switch from trying to figure out what I have to figuring out how to treat what I have. I found some treatment methods, including weekly IV infusions, medications, physical therapy and a strict histamine-free diet that helped me get strong enough to be able to ditch the wheelchair and learn to walk again. The first steps I took without fainting, after so many months in a wheelchair, were a million times more monumental than when I had learned to walk the first time. One small step for man, but a giant leap toward the beginning of my recovery.

Living with dysautonomia has been very difficult for me, dealing with a malfunctioning body is frustrating and exhausting. Accepting that my life cannot return to the life I had previously lived took me a lot of time and came with a lot of tears. I have had to readjust my plans in life, and adjust my expectations. I have come to accept the fact that hiking mountains and backpacking Europe isn't something my body will agree with right now, but I believe that someday (hopefully sooner than later...) I will become healthy enough to go and do those things.

I experience ups and downs with the severity of my symptoms, but am overall enjoying a much greater quality of life than I was last summer. I am always fighting to get better, and in the meantime, I am finding ways to heal and cope with all that has changed in my life. I'm learning how to find joy even when times are rough and the future appears hopeless. Further, I've learned that nothing really can be hopeless. Even when we can't imagine things getting any better, they do. I am optimistic that with time and more research in the field of dysautonomia, I will find medications and treatment options that can return me to a healthier state of living. I am extremely thankful for how far I have come, and for all of those who offer me support and encouragement as I continue to fight this chronic illness.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about my condition, this link is a source to some great information. Dysautonomia is not a well-known condition. Many of my doctors hadn’t ever heard of it, which is what made my journey to receiving a diagnosis so long and painful. I am hoping that by sharing my story, I can spare someone suffering with this condition from spending such a great deal of time undiagnosed. On average, it takes patients with failures of the autonomic nervous system three years to be correctly diagnosed. This is a statistic that can be easily improved if more awareness can be raised and more people become educated about the condition.