| My name is Holly McDermott; I am 40 years old with 2 boys under the age of five and a husband who is active duty military and frequently deployed. I and happy and grateful to be chosen as an athenaship recipient! My goal is to bring more awareness to autoimmune diseases and how they, as a whole, are the number one killer of women. My hope is that we can make enough noise to get more research done, make more treatments available and let women with chronic disease now that there are some common elements under the “autoimmune disease umbrella” frequently chronic fatigue and depression occur and that they are not alone out there!
My story is similar to many other of the women who have been recipients of Athenaships. I have been extremely active and healthy my whole life. I called myself the “jack of all trades athlete.” I played and excelled at multiple sports throughout high school and my 20’s. I was one of the first girl beach lifeguards in South Carolina. I also taught as a certified snow ski and fitness instructor and trained for road &tri races with fast guys for tougher competition and to push myself. This was all for fun! My real job was working in sales and marketing for a Fortune 100 Pharmaceutical Company. About 7 years ago I started experiencing extreme fatigue and hair loss. Within the year I was diagnosed with my first two autoimmune diseases, hypothyroidism and alopecia areata (hair loss). With autoimmune diseases, something makes your immune system go haywire so your body then attacks itself. The hypothyroidism was easily treatable with medication but like many other autoimmune diseases not much is known as to what causes the alopecia or how to stop it. I was put on many different immunosuppressant medications that are typically used to treat cancer patients and some for organ transplant patients. Nothing worked. I lost all of my hair over the course of the year. As a woman, losing all of my hair was initially devastating. When I was pregnant with my first son I was then diagnosed with Lupus, another autoimmune disease where your body attacks your organs. My fourth autoimmune disease first occurred when my first son was 2 and my husband was deployed in Iraq. I woke up with paralysis my left side of my body. I couldn’t move my arm or leg and was hospitalized. I was then diagnosed with CIDP (chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy which is inflammation of the spinal cord). This has caused permanent impairment of sensation and movement and weakness in my left arm and leg. Because I’m left-handed, I have difficulty writing/holding a pen, opening things, I can’t hold a tennis racket or golf club and it’s hard to ride a bike.
What has been frustrating to me personally is having no control over these chronic autoimmune diseases and the fact that since the majority of these diseases affect women, not much research has been done and there currently aren’t many treatment options. What has kept me sane is running, yoga and focusing on the great things in my life like my family and my relative health. However, I have been in “survival mode” and physically haven’t challenged myself with trying anything new in over 7 years. I have never been to the Grand Canyon and I am excited to experience hiking rim to rim (what could be better than the Grand Canyon?) with a fantastic group of like women and am grateful for the Athenaship grant for allowing me this opportunity!
Event: Grand Canyon R2R2R |
