I remember competing in a soccer game when I was seventeen. After running one length of the field, I knew something was wrong. “Right leg, left leg, right leg, left leg,” I thought to myself, trying to will one foot in front of the other, but my legs were like dead weights attached to my body, as if the strings connecting my muscles to my brain had lost their elasticity.
Soon after, I was diagnosed with Graves Disease. For seven years, I lived with the side effects of the condition, and there were many. My short term memory was faulty. I can vividly recall a trip to the grocery store with my mother. She asked me to get an ingredient from the next aisle. Within a matter of seconds, I’d rounded the corner and found myself standing there, knowing I was supposed to get something, but my mind was completely blank as to what that item might be. I remember that moment clearly because of the terror I felt — terror that my mind was lost in a fog, and I couldn’t navigate through it. These kinds of memory losses were commonplace, and I’d sometimes feel confused, unsure about directions to places I’d been before or hesitant to bring up a conversation that perhaps I’d already had and forgotten.
Simple tasks were exhausting. I couldn’t shampoo and condition my hair without stopping to rest on the shower floor. At school, on my way to class, I would stop halfway up the stairs and pretend to look for a textbook in my backpack. I always had the right textbook, but this moment to rest saved me the embarrassment of passing out from exertion. The elevator was reserved for kids with disabilities, but besides the excessive weight loss, which my teachers attributed to an assumed eating disorder, I looked normal, and I didn’t want to ask for permission to use it. Although I ate gluttonously - until my jaw would ache - at 5 feet 7 inches tall, I weighed only 103 pounds.
My hair fell out. Not to the extent I went bald, but each morning I’d awake to a pillowcase covered in loosed strands. Two fingers placed on my wrist became second nature, as I’d check the count of my racing heartbeat. I remember standing outside in the winter as it snowed, flushed and sweaty in a t-shirt, trying to cool off.
After a decision to move forward with radioactive iodine treatment, paired with daily medication, it’s now been five years that I’ve been healthy and relatively stable, but those seven years of sickness shaped me. I learned from other’s judgments of my appearance that it’s best not to jump to conclusions — that this shell of a body can give clues, but those clues can lead to wrong, even hurtful assumptions. I learned that I needed people, and that the ones who really care about you will stick it out through thick and thin. And I learned that there’s not always a formula to fix things, but you press on nonetheless.