As someone who lives with a disability that's not always visible to the layperson, it's deceptively challenging to live in a world that's very "ableist." I was a student-athlete for most of my life. I was a varsity swimmer, runner, and triathlete on the weekends. After I finished my sporting career, I took a stab at emergency medicine, and I was quite good if I do say so myself. I responded to hundreds of 911 calls during my career, and even though the job was sad at times, I met some of the most wonderful people. These people would become my second family, we would laugh and cry together and we all knew when it came down to it we would be there to celebrate each other's successes and as a shoulder to cry on.

One hot day in July my life changed very drastically and it was all over for me. I was attacked by a patient who was having a psychiatric emergency. As I was trying to calm down a 9-year-old boy he lunged at me and knocked me to the ground. I lost consciousness and when I came to there were 6 firefighters and 2 police officers trying to hold this poor kid down and strapping him down to my stretcher. Just watching the struggle was awful; I cannot imagine how that patient felt. My head was spinning and all I could think of was getting the call done and getting back on the road so I could help more patients. It was a requirement of my company that I be evaluated at urgent care, so I went thinking I could get back to running calls in an hour or so, that was when everything started to change.

As I was laying on an exam table in the urgent care, I started to have repetitive questioning and I couldn't remember where I was or why I was there. I was sent back to the ER where I dropped the patient off before going to urgent care. I don't remember much of that night except my brother sitting with me and driving me home around 2 a.m. All of the tests came back negative for any abnormalities and I didn't have any fractures, so they said I probably just had a nasty concussion. I needed to be reevaluated by my employers' choice of doctors before going back to work. The following morning did not go as planned. It was like I had aged back to when I was 15 years old again, an angsty teenager with one hell of an attitude. It stayed this way for about two and a half years. The initial injury to my head, the concussion, healed in the months following the incident, but the psychological trauma took much longer. I had to relearn how to be an adult.

Before the head injury, I lived with my boyfriend at the time in an apartment we shared with our dog, Fisher. I was no longer able to live on my own, let alone take care of an animal, so we moved back in with my parents. I thought that was as far back as I could go; I could not have been more wrong. I was having auditory and visual hallucinations and panic attacks three to four times a day. I wanted to go back to work, to be a regular, functioning member of society. I was so afraid of what other people would think and the negative connotation of the word disabled. I was a star athlete; I had just gone through an extra year of schooling for my paramedic license; I had my whole life ahead of me, all planned out, and in a matter of seconds that was stripped away from me.

I spent the next two years lying to myself and attempting to return to work. The Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing; patients needed me. Each time I attempted a return, my heart rate would spike; I started to pass out. By this time Worker's Comp had dropped my case, stating I was fine to return to work because there was nothing structurally wrong with my brain. When I tried to appeal, the Worker's Comp doctor just reiterated that there was no structural damage and that I could return to work. In the months following that failed appeal, I started to pass out after every call, and my heart rate was constantly elevated at dangerous levels. My primary doctor told me I could not return to work until I stopped fainting and got my heart rate under control. The problem with that was no one would diagnose me with anything. After two and a half years and too many ER visits and hospital stays to count, I landed at Cleveland Clinic where I was finally diagnosed with a rare condition called POTS that falls under a diagnosis of Dysautonomia.

POTS stands for Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which is quite a mouthful. That means: that when I go from lying flat to sitting or sitting to standing, my heart rate becomes elevated more than it should. My type of POTS causes me to lose consciousness which only happens to about 19% of people living with POTS. After being written off by countless doctors for three years, I finally had a diagnosis from a doctor at one of the top hospitals in the country. After being told it was just anxiety and that I needed to stop wishing this syndrome on myself, someone finally listened and didn't say I was crazy. It was a huge sigh of relief for myself and my family.

That small victory was just the beginning of a much larger war that had just begun. This head injury had cost me two long-term relationships and countless friendships by the time an actual diagnosis rolled around. Even though I had a diagnosis from a reputable institute it was incredibly difficult to get any doctors to believe me, and when they did the cardiologists would tell me that it was a neurological problem, and the neurologists would say it was a cardiac problem. That was if they even knew what POTS was at all. I spent months getting a care team together that would work best for me. I was on so many medications, they were constantly changing; nobody could keep up.

I developed diabetes from the various medicines that were supposed to fix my brain and help ease the random pains associated with POTS. After a week in the hospital, my sugar was finally under control. Diabetes was just another problem in a long string of problems.

During this time I moved back and forth from Michigan to Florida multiple times to find good doctors that would work seamlessly together. The most difficult find was a doctor who would treat the POTS. I found a woman in Naples, Florida who said she could treat the POTS, so I made one final move to Florida. I left Michigan in favor of doctors who had heard of this mysterious condition. This doctor did her best, but I was not making it easy on her. I ended up with a huge blood clot and no real answers. POTS is not the type of syndrome that responds well to homeopathic remedies, unfortunately. I finally found a primary doctor who had heard my story and wanted to help. She taught me the importance of being patient with myself and how to love every part of myself, including the medical mysteries that make it so hard to perform even the simplest of tasks.

For three years I told myself that I could get back to the person I was before the head injury, and for three years I believed it. I told myself that I wasn't disabled because some days my symptoms weren't as bad. I told myself that I wasn't as bad off as other people I had connected with that also had a similar diagnosis. I thought I was going to get back to that person who was a star athlete and a great paramedic, so I couldn't be disabled. It wasn't until recently that I understood I needed to change my perspective. I have a hidden disability. It doesn't always rear its ugly face, but it can be nasty. You wouldn't be able to tell that I have a medical condition that causes a great many disruptions in my life unless you asked me. After being told I was trying to "scam the system" for so long, I started to believe it. I believed I made this disability up to satiate my reasoning for being so lazy, but that wasn't the case.

Sometimes it's hard for someone with a body that functions correctly to understand what life is like for those of us whose body's don't. I still love to do the same things I did before I had to do them from my wheelchair. It's challenging to sit in a chair and be pushed around like you have no control over your own life. My mom and sister pushed me around Universal Studios, it was one of the most mentally excruciating things I've ever had to endure, even though that is one of my favorite places on earth. I wanted to run to all the different rides with them, but my body physically couldn't do it. I also couldn't just get out of the chair when I felt well enough to walk because I was too afraid of what other people might think. On our first night, my sister and I went to grab a snack before heading to bed. A girl and her boyfriend pointed at me in my wheelchair and laughed like we were a joke and that I was only in the wheelchair to get out of standing in lines like everyone else. The truth is that I would love to be able to stand in line just like everyone else, but if I had tried, I would end up unconscious on the floor in a matter of minutes. I don't look disabled, but under the surface, it's a different story.

This isn't just a "don't judge a book by this cover" story, I want people to change their way of thinking. I'm still a person with my own personality that doesn't revolve around a health condition. This story is about my observations as someone living with a hidden disability. I've left out some of the minor details, but the message remains the same; just because someone doesn't look disabled doesn't mean they aren't struggling with a disability. Finding the right doctors and the correct treatment can be challenging but it's necessary. It's shocking to see the lengths some people must go to obtain proper treatment for anything that doesn't fit the status quo.

If you're someone living with a disability that you don't believe is debilitating enough to warrant the term disabled, take this as a sign that you need to be kinder to yourself. Disabled isn't a bad word, and it doesn't mean you can't do things for yourself; it means you have a condition that makes it a little harder to do everyday tasks, and that's ok! You are not worth less as a human just because you need a little extra help sometimes, and if we're honest, who can't use a little extra help from time to time?