Patient by Diagnosis. Founder by Decision.

By Camden Hill, Founder & CEO of Areluno Health

I was 20 years old when my body started quitting on me.

At first, I tried to explain it away. I was tired in a way sleep couldn’t fix. Not ordinary tired. The kind of fatigue that follows you into bed and is still there when you wake up. Some mornings I felt like myself. Other mornings, my eyes wouldn’t focus, my muscles weakened, and simple things took everything I had.

I kept asking myself: What is happening to me?

I was in college. I was supposed to be building a future, making plans, figuring out who I wanted to become. Instead, I was sitting in waiting rooms, hoping someone could tell me why my body no longer felt like mine.

When you’re young and your symptoms come and go, people don’t always see what you’re living through. Maybe it’s stress. Maybe you need more sleep. Maybe you’re doing too much. I heard explanations, but I still didn’t have answers.

In 2017, I finally received a diagnosis: myasthenia gravis, a rare autoimmune condition that causes fluctuating muscle weakness. I had a name for what was happening. But a diagnosis didn’t erase the hardest part of living with it.

My illness didn’t wait for appointments.

It was there on mornings when getting ready felt impossible. It was there when my vision doubled, when my hands grew weak, and when exhaustion changed what I could do that day. Sometimes those moments passed before I ever saw my doctor.

Then I’d sit in an exam room, trying to fit weeks or months of living into a short conversation. How do you remember every bad day? How do you explain a symptom that isn’t happening right in front of someone? And what happens to the details you forget?

My doctors weren’t the problem. They were working with a snapshot. My disease lived in the whole film, and the film never made it into the room.

That gap stayed with me.

It’s why I founded Areluno Health. I wanted to build the tool I wish I’d had when I was the patient struggling to find the right words.

Areluno is a free mobile app where patients can record daily check-ins, symptoms, and experiences as they happen. It organizes that information into reports they can share with their care teams. Instead of relying on memory alone, patients can bring a clearer picture of their lives between visits.

The app is available in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. But accessibility means more to me than language. I think about the person whose hands are too tired to type, whose vision is unreliable, or who simply doesn’t have the energy for one more complicated task. I know those days because I’ve lived them.

I didn’t study this problem in a classroom. I lived it in waiting rooms.

Patient first. Founder second. That order built this company.

I can’t give my 20-year-old self back the time he spent searching for answers. I can’t undo the fear of knowing something was wrong and not knowing why. But I can use what I lived through to make the next appointment a little different for someone else.

If you’re a patient reading this, please know that what happens between appointments matters. The weakness you felt on Tuesday. The pattern you noticed at two in the morning. The thing you stopped doing because it became too difficult. Those are parts of your story worth telling. Write them down when you can. Share them with your care team. You deserve to be heard even on the days your symptoms aren’t visible.

The space between appointments is where our lives actually happen. It’s where my disease lived for years, unseen.

Not anymore.

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Camden Hill is the Founder & CEO of Areluno Health, a free app that helps patients document their symptoms and daily limitations between appointments so their care teams walk in with the full story. Learn more at arelunohealth.com.