Warrior Wisdom

Growing up, my stomach was my biggest problem. I got pneumonia when I was 10 years old, which led my stomach to reject anything I tried to eat after multiple rounds of antibiotics and steroids. After that, I was in and out of hospitals and dependent on an NG tube for...

I was diagnosed at age 8 with the rare, genetic disease Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP), which I inherited from my mother. FAP is caused by a mutation to the APC gene and causes 100s to 1000s of precancerous polyps to develop in the cancer. These polyps will turn...

When I was little I always seemed to have problems with my joints, I would be in and out of PT all throughout my high school years. We knew I was hyper mobile because my shoulder would always dislocate. My doctors really didn’t think anything of it, and my life was...

In 2016, I was in community college about to transfer to a four year university. I remember it was February, and I had not felt well for a while. I got what I assumed was a bad case of strep throat. I went to the doctor, got told it was a sinus infection, and I went...

From the age of 4, when my parents divorced, I had symptoms of poor mental health. I was sent to see school counselors and behavioral health clinics in my younger years. When I was 12, I had my first hallucination that I kept to myself; diagnoses of depression and...

For many years, I had off and on sciatic pain in my left leg. Tried various therapies to relieve the pain, but to no avail. After finding a competent massage therapist, he discovered a lump in the back of my leg at the base of my left butt cheek. After having it...

I was born with X-Linked Hypophosphatemia (XLH), it is a rare genetic disorder that affects about one in 25,000 people. I am one of them. I have a low level of phosphorus in the blood (Hypophosphatemia). This causes a wide range of symptoms and disorders that affect...

My earliest memories are of pain. That sounds rather dramatic to say, but it's true. I was the kid who was always limping through Elementary School, who constantly complained of this or that ache. But as a child, I was assured that it was all growing pains. I...

Before I was even born my quality-of-life seemed low. My parents were told they could abort me because the type of spina bifida I have Is known to be devastating. My parents were told that I wouldn’t be able to walk, they would have to catheterize me long-term and I...

I was bullied from a very young age. On top of that, everything I tried out for, I was told I wasn’t good enough. I had one happy place-theatre! My symptoms began in August 2017-I had nightmares that theatre would exclude me as well. Then September 1, 2017, those...

I have had issues since I was a child. I was sick often. As I got older and went to the doctor by myself, I was called a liar. Nurses refused to believe I had a sinus infection once a month; that I had a respiratory infection every few months. Then one year I had an...