San Angelo Live reports Keelie Brydson first noticed something was wrong in the fourth grade when, she says, “my eyelid would be really droopy.”
Turns out that Keelie has myasthenia gravis (MG), an autoimmune disease affecting communication between neurotransmitters and muscles.
After Keelie’s diagnosis, her entire family had to deal with the emotional fallout. “I was angry all the time,” she says. “My mom went through some anger. […] My brother is still affected. He went into severe depression [and] still has anger.”
Keelie’s MG affects her ocular muscles (causing the drooping eyelid), as well as other areas of her body.
While muscle weakness is the most well-known symptom of the disease (myasthenia gravis literally means “grave muscle weakness”), there are other effects that people often don’t consider.
In addition to the psychological effects, Keelie also experienced complications from treatment. She was started on steroids, underwent plasmapheresis (replacing her blood plasma with synthetic plasma), had her thymus gland removed, and needed another surgery to raise her eyelid and repair the cornea in her right eye.
You’d think she suffered enough.
But, throughout all of that, she became allergic to the painkillers she’d been prescribed. “I felt [everything] and was under constant stress,” she remembers.
Thankfully, Keelie is doing pretty well now handling life with MG. Although she still has days when the weakness affects her—she notices it in her breathing—her experiences have also inspired her.
Her own ocular surgery was “probably the coolest surgery” she experienced, because she was conscious and able to talk to her surgeon throughout the entire procedure, which has fueled Keelie’s ambition to become an Ocular Plastic Surgeon. Currently, she’s pursuing her degree at Texas A&M.
Overcoming the effects of MG is one thing. Dealing with everything else that comes with it is something else.
“It’s frustrating and difficult to live with,” says Keelie’s mother, Melissa. “She can’t do so many things that she used to.”
