Chapter 1

Middle school is hard and so confusing. When I was in elementary school, I only had one or a few teachers. Now that I'm in middle school there are giant people in a giant school. You probably think that everyone has crazy and awkward middle school years, but I have EDS.EDS stands for Ehlers Danlos Syndrome which is  a genetic disorder. EDS causes pain in the joints, headaches, and migraines. The pain is caused by a lack of connective tissue. That means your muscles have to work harder than most people’s.

The symbol for EDS is a zebra which comes from a saying “When you hear hoofbeats think zebras not horses”. The reasoning behind this is that EDS isn't very common. So when you go to the doctors, they say something like “Oh it's just growing pains.”

Chapter 2

    When I was young I would be in tears because of pain. This was before I could speak. My mom knew something was wrong. She also had the same symptoms. When the doctors said nothing was wrong, She knew it  was something.My mom tried so many things to help the pain go away.

Some of the things she tried helped for a little bit, but nothing got rid of it.

One day my mom and dad decided we were going to move. “ I don’t want to move!” I cried. I didn’t want to leave my friends and the house I had lived in since I was a baby. We also had to leave the farm we lived on.

“Your dad is going to retire from the army and were going to move to North Carolina, and it will be are forever home. Were not moving again.” My mom told me.

I really didn’t want to move because I had just met a girl who became my best friend. It was only the summer before I started third grade when we bought the house. I went to school for about a month, and then October

rolled around. First we packed up the house. Then my dogs, cats, brother, mom and I crammed into moving truck and we drove away.

    My dad had to stay in Wisconsin until he was officially out of the military. I missed him so much. He had been away before, when I was younger, but only for a few weeks at a time. Unless you count when I was a baby, then he wasn't around for a long time. Before I was born, my due date was coming and my dad was deployed. Whoever was in charge let him come home for my birth! It was amazing because most people don't get to come home.

The drive was long and boring and very stinky with all my animals in the truck. The only time I sleep on car rides is at night, but my brother slept a lot.

My mom of course was driving. So the drive seemed a lot longer than it was. I had taken drives to Virginia, but North Carolina was an extra five hours away. For a total of about thirty hours.

Chapter 3

When we got to our new house, it was night time  and was really dark. At first we didn't know where to park, because we didn't see the driveway. We parked the car, and headed up to the house. It was a really small house and it was practically a cracker box! It was a lot smaller than the last house. This house was the smallest thing I've ever seen.

I mean really This house was three times smaller than my old one. Anyway, we walked in and apparently it used to be some old person's house because there was fake flowers everywhere.

Even though it was a super small house, I somehow managed to get lost. I thought I was going one way, when I really was going the opposite. For the rest of that night, my brother slept in a room but my mom and I slept on the couch. When I woke up the next morning  the bad news continued. There was no running water. There was nothing to drink until my mom went to the store. That wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was we couldn't even flush the toilet!

That day we had to clean up the house. We started with my brother’s room. Next, we moved on to the living room. That night we all slept in the same places. Finally, the next day we got our water running. After that we cleaned my room, my mom’s, and the kitchen. When we were done with the main cleaning part, we still had to get everything organized in the house. Through all of this I was still having pain! We hadn't gotten any answers yet. The pain was getting worse, more frequent and in more joints. I also got more frequent headaches. After all of this there was more. I was starting to get light headed. All this and no answers we had no idea what was going on.

Chapter 4

The time came around where I had to start school. My house was small, but the school was huge. The school was pre-k through fifth grade so I was in the middle being in the third grade. There were over one thousand kids that went to that school. At my old school I knew everyone really quick. Here, it took me years to know most of the people. That's just in my grade.

My mom explained that I had pains to my teacher and the office. There still isn't much we could do but at least they knew. Some days my pain was so bad that I had to go home. The year went on and we would go to the doctors time after time.

One day we went to the doctor and explained everything. We did a normal exam and then he sent me out of the room. I wondered why Dr. Mike would send me out of the room. My mom and I left and got in the car. That’s when she told me that Dr. Mike said I was lying about my pain. I have been told that it was something small but I was in total shock that he said I would lie.

The year went on and I went to fourth grade. In the middle of the year my mom took me to see a geneticist because my mom was doing research and found a genetic disorder that we both might have, EDS. The geneticist said it was possible but not for sure we have it. As time went on, my mom went to the the geneticist.

She was diagnosed with EDS. This was an amazing achievement because we finally knew what was going on. Yet because it was my mom’s appointment I wasn't diagnosed,

After that I got another appointment with the geneticist. I was diagnosed, I officially had EDS. There still wasn't anything I could really do. My pain has and will always be there. Having an answer was just exciting and also narrowed down the questions about what was going on.

Chapter 5

I started fifth grade and everything was normal. Except my pain started to be an issue.