I Wasn’t Supposed to Be the Sick Girl. But That’s Who They Made Me.
The thing about being sick young? You don’t even realize what you’re losing.
Not at first.
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At 14, I wasn’t thinking about hospitals or diagnosis codes. I was thinking about school trips, homecoming, sneaking out with friends—normal teenage things.
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Then my body stopped working.
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The dizziness. The weakness. The pain. The way my legs gave out underneath me like they didn’t even belong to me.
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Suddenly, I was thrown into a world of test results, misdiagnoses, doctors who contradicted each other, nurses who talked around me like I wasn’t even in the room.
And just like that, my life wasn’t mine anymore.
I sat in sterile waiting rooms, trying to explain the unexplainable.
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My hands shook uncontrollably. My vision would black out when I stood. The pain wrapped around my spine like barbed wire.
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I kept waiting for someone to tell me what was happening.
Instead, they told me what my life would be.
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"You’ll never walk again."
"It’s all in your head."
"Maybe you’re just anxious."
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I was either too sick to function or not sick enough to be taken seriously.
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Every appointment came with a new label, a new treatment plan, a new warning about what my life would look like now.
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Some doctors saw only the symptoms.
Some saw only my mental state.
Some saw only a teenage girl they didn’t take seriously.
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No one saw me. Samantha.
No One Knew What Was Wrong. But That Didn’t Stop Them from Telling Me What My Life Would Be.
I Didn’t Accept It. I Fought It...
I wish I could say I accepted it gracefully. That I found some deep sense of peace and purpose.
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I didn’t.
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I was pissed.
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Pissed at my body for betraying me.
Pissed at the medical system for dismissing me.
Pissed at everyone around me who got to live normal lives while I was stuck in hospital rooms, feeling like I didn’t exist.
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And I used every ounce of that anger.
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​They told me I wouldn’t walk?
I forced my body to move, gripping onto walls, onto furniture, onto anything that would hold me.
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They told me I wouldn’t graduate on time?
I kept up anyway—whether that meant a tutor teaching me in my bed because I was too weak to sit up, or doing homework in a hospital bed, struggling to stay awake through the meds.
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They told me I had to accept this life?
I refused.
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Every time someone underestimated me, every time a doctor looked past me like I was just another chart, every time someone told me what I couldn’t do—I made it my mission to prove them wrong.
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It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t pretty.
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It was messy, painful, frustrating as hell.
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But I was never going to let my illness define me.
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​I Thought I’d Leave It All Behind. But Somehow, I Got Pulled Back In.
For years, I fought to leave it behind.
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I went to college.
I worked.
I built a life that had nothing to do with hospitals, medications, or medical charts.
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And for a while? I thought I was free.
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Until I realized—no matter how far I ran, I kept seeing people like me.
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People who were still fighting to be believed.
People who were stuck in the same system, screaming for help and getting ignored.
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And suddenly, I couldn’t unsee it.
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Because I knew exactly how that felt.
And I couldn’t let them go through it alone.
Why I created My Lyme Coach
I didn’t set out to start a coaching business.
I didn’t wake up one day and decide I had all the answers.
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I just knew what it felt like to be drowning in a system that didn’t see me.
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And I knew that having even one person who truly gets it—who sees YOU, not just a list of symptoms—changes everything.
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That’s why I do this.
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Because you don’t need fixing.
Because you are not broken.
Because this isn’t where your story ends.