Disability: My Story

I was healthy three years ago. I went from walking to a wheelchair in a matter of months.

It all started with unexplainable pain in my ribcage. At first, I thought it was a flare up from an old horseback riding injury, but the pain slowly got worse…and spread. Within months it was all over my body. I could barely eat, move, or speak above a whisper. The pain was so bad I had trouble drawing in breath. I became underweight and very sick, very quickly.

Through all of this I had been in a long-distance relationship, and then engagement, with my high school sweetheart, Colton. Despite the unexplainable pain, we moved forward with our wedding plans, and we got married March 6, 2021.

Two weeks after our honeymoon, while driving back from a date night in Topeka, KS, my hands became paralyzed from the wrist down. That was the first symptom that my pain could be connected to anything neurological.

Within two weeks, I lost the ability to walk, speak, taste, feel and move my arms and legs, and started having seizures and hallucination on top of absolutely debilitating pain. It only got worse. The ER doctor told us to stop coming back and find a specialist who could take our insurance. He told me that I was probably dying, but he didn’t know why.

One month later, I was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder, or FND.

No one really knows what causes this, however the stigma surrounding it is pervasive and damaging. FND used to be considered a psychiatric-based illness called “Conversion Disorder”. It came from a belief Freud popularized that your body can take mental trauma and convert it into physical symptoms. This has since been disproven, yet many doctors still dismiss FND as psychological. It is hard to get treatment and even harder to find something that works.

So far, nothing has worked for me.

I went from using a cane to a wheelchair in a matter of months, learned to navigate my disability alone while my husband was deployed overseas two months after my diagnosis. I went back to college and just graduated May, 2024. I have a sweet daughter, Hadassah. My husband, Colton, is back home and we live in the beautiful Idaho panhandle.

If you had told me three years ago that this is what my life would look like today, I wouldn’t have believed you. I never thought I would be happy again, much less be confident and enjoy using my mobility aids, be able to finish school, and have a daughter! God is so good and has been faithful through every devastating valley and unexpected mountain peak of the last three years.

I started my Instagram page, @the.annegirl, as a way to process what was happening to me and encourage others who found themselves struggling with disability or chronic pain. I never expected it to reach the audience and community that it has – the friends I have found there have blessed me just as much as I hope I bless them!

The return of this blog is an outworking of that blessing. I want others to know that it IS possible to find confidence, hope, and courage after disability. That God is still good. That it is possible to be happy again. That it is possible to love your life (and even your mobility aids). I hope, on this page, you find some encouragement and support. I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for being here.