In your life, you've likely met someone with a rare disease. You've probably seen it at some point. And you've definitely heard of it. Maybe you heard it on the news, or read about it, or heard about your aunt's best friend's cousin's uncle's friend's son who has one. Whatever the case may be, I can guarantee you've come across it many times in your life.

When you hear about this kid with an impossible-to-pronounce illness on the news, you may feel bad. You may feel bad for a second, but you don't give it that much thought. When you hear about a rare disease, it seems far away. It's rare and it affects OTHER people. It affects people across the country, people you don't really know. It doesn't happen to you. None of these rare diseases can happen to you.

But it can.

You see, I, like so many other people in this world, was once in the same boat. I remember hearing about terrible things happening to people, but it never connected. It wasn't something I ever had to worry about. Of course, as you know.... I was wrong.

Your life can change in a second. I was paralyzed in less than 12 hours. I woke up with a small pain in my neck, and didn't think much of it. By that evening, I couldn't walk, sit up, or move my arms. I was in pain. I couldn't feel pain or temperature on my left side. Everything was turned upside-down in just a few hours. And I couldn't help thinking that THIS was something that happened to other people. This is what you hear about on the news. This isn't something that happens to ME. Me, an ordinary 13-year-old girl.

I had never heard of Transverse Myelitis before then. No one I knew had, either. Those words were foreign. We had never heard of it because it's rare. Transverse Myelitis is a rare disease. "Transverse Myelitis" sounds like a fictional disease you read about in dystopian novels or something. It didn't sound like something that had happened to me. Sometimes, even now, 4 and a half years later, I laugh a little at the fact that it did happen to me. It's still kind of surreal sometimes.

I don't share this for pity. I don't want that at all! And I think I speak for most of us with rare diseases when I say that. All we really want is understanding. Awareness. We're NOT just people across the country or the world. We're not just people you hear about on TV. We're very, very real. Our lives are real. Our struggles are real. We shouldn't be people you feel bad for temporarily, but then forget about two seconds later. We deserve more appreciation, more awareness, more attention than we get. Rare diseases aren't something you can just turn your back on. They're not something you can just brush off. You may not think they could impact your life, but trust me.

They very well could.