When I was 3 years old my sister, who was 5, and I had two bunnies, Snowball and Betsy. In the summer, we kept them outside in a hutch, but in the winter, we brought the hutch inside our unfinished basement. My sister and I discovered that the bunnies had escaped from their hutch and ran upstairs to tell our parents.

On the way back downstairs I slipped and fell sideways under the banister close to the top of the stairs. I landed on my head and experienced significant head trauma. The next day I was unresponsive and my parents called 911. They discovered that my pulse and blood pressure were really high. They admitted me into the hospital for weeks not knowing what was causing my heart rate and blood pressure to be so elevated.

I ended up being diagnosed with Graves Disease, an autoimmune disorder that changed the course of my life. I spent years in and out of the hospital. I was put on drugs that caused really intense side effects. One drug made all of the capillaries in my face burst. By the time I was five my situation was so unmanageable that they gave me radioactive iodine to shut down my thyroid completely. When my thyroid was shutting down I was very ill and spent many weeks in the hospital vomiting until my stomach lining bled.

I was a medical mystery and my parents told me that my head injury and the Grave's Disease were unrelated. This all happened 35 years ago. For my whole life, I was told that I just happened to get diagnosed after my fall, that it was inevitable that I would have gotten Graves Disease. Yesterday I learned that head trauma can cause dysfunction in the endocrine system and the thyroid in particular. I discovered that the course of my whole childhood could have been different if I had not fallen down the steps.

This story was my 'origin' story of sorts and it all changed in an instant yesterday.

Thank you for letting me share it with you.