From Hospital Walls to Charger Halls

University was a fresh start, a world full of opportunity just waiting for me to dive in. I stepped onto campus bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I was going into STEM, positive that I had the map to navigate adulthood and confident that equations, formulas and discoveries would define me. I was eager to live life as a young adult, free of boundaries and ready to leave the safe cocoon of my childhood behind. I couldn’t wait to find my place in the world.

But life, as it often does, had other plans.

Now, I’m running across the University of New Haven campus, Jazzman’s coffee in hand, rushing to make it to my 12:30 poetry class. My backpack slaps against my back as I weave through students, dodging groups lingering by the lawn. My morning — if noon even counts as morning — started like it always does: caffeine first, then everything else. If someone had told my 18-year-old self that I would be an English student, running late to class, I would have laughed. But my journey to this moment was anything but ordinary.

In week one of university, it was just a discomfort in my chest. I thought it was the stress and pressure of being a first-year student. Soon, it became something bigger, something I couldn’t ignore. My body began to betray me. I felt weaker, I could barely eat and I couldn’t keep water down. I would fall asleep at my desk, unable to focus as my body spiraled into a slow collapse.

I went from one doctor to another, in and out of hospital rooms, each time hoping some professional would have an answer — only to be sent home with empty diagnoses. I was repeatedly told it was just stress or that I was a mystery case. No one could explain what was happening to me. No one could provide a name for the illness that was stealing my strength. I couldn’t feel my legs. I tripped and I fell, gravity no longer obeying me. I broke a bone in my foot — not from an accident, but from weakness. I couldn’t understand it, and neither could they.

I dropped out of university. Everything I had worked for — the dream of becoming someone renowned in the world of science — crumbled. My world was confined to hospital rooms, the sterile white walls closing in on me as my body continued to fail me. I went to more than 20 hospitals, and still, no one had an answer.

The darkness came like a heavy fog, the fear of the unknown creeping in every day. I spent sleepless nights lying awake, my mind racing, trying to figure out why my body was doing this to me. I wondered if I would ever walk again, if I would ever feel like myself again. The fear of becoming a shell of the person I had once been overwhelmed me.

I sank into depression; I couldn’t trust my body anymore. Each day felt like a battle with my mind, my body and the world around me. There were nights I cried myself to sleep and other nights I simply couldn’t sleep. The pain in my legs felt like a thousand needles persistently piercing my skin. But it wasn’t just the physical pain that hurt — it was the mental anguish that gnawed at me. The isolation, the loneliness, the fear that I would never be able to return to the life I had envisioned for myself.

Finally, in the quiet darkness where everything seemed impossible, something unexpected happened. I found solace in words.

I went to my pediatrician — the last person I thought would understand. I remember telling her everything: how I had fallen down the stairs, how I couldn’t feel anything from the hips down, how my legs felt like they were made of jelly.

I was terrified and angry because no one believed me. They all dismissed my pain and told me it was in my head. But she looked at me with such compassion, and for the first time in months, someone listened. She made a call. A bed was prepared, and I was sent to a hospital for more tests.

In that cold, sterile room, I underwent a series of procedures that felt like the slow unwinding of my existence. Spinal taps, blood work, MRIs from my skull to my feet. Days turned to weeks of testing. The doctors pumped me full of medications, but nothing seemed to help. I was paralyzed. I was told I might never walk again.

The diagnosis came eventually — Guillain-Barré syndrome — a rare, devastating condition where your immune system attacks your nerves like an enemy inside your body. Your ability to walk, move and feel disappears. The doctors had been telling me I was a medical mystery all this time, but there it was: a name for my suffering, a label for my pain.

I was sent to an inpatient rehabilitation facility, where I had to learn how to use a wheelchair and navigate a world that no longer felt like mine. It was terrifying. Every day was a struggle. The pain was constantly sharp and burning, like tiny daggers piercing my skin. Despite this, I fought — not because I was strong, but because there was no other choice.

The shame of being weak and needing help clawed at my sense of self. I used to be independent, a person who did things on their own. But now, I had to rely on others for everything. I felt like I had lost my identity, like the girl I used to be was slipping through my fingers. I was lost in a sea of needles, tears and fear. The darkness in my mind was relentless.

Reading and writing became my escape.

I didn’t have the strength to run away from the hospital room, but I could run through the pages of books. I could lose myself in stories, in poems, in the words I scribbled in my journal. It wasn’t a cure, but it was a lifeline. Through words, I was able to feel human again, like I could reclaim a part of myself that had been stolen.

Slowly, the impossible began to happen. I moved my toes, I lifted my ankle, stood and walked with a walker. It wasn’t much at first, but it was enough to remind me that I wasn’t completely broken. I could still rebuild, even if the road was long and filled with pain.

I’m back on campus now, weaving through crowds, Jazzman’s coffee warming my hands against the crisp West Haven air. I’m running late to poetry class — again — but I’ve never felt more alive.

I’ve regained full motor function, yet the feeling in my legs is still gone. It’s a constant tingling, like the sensation of a limb falling asleep — but persistent. It’s a sharp electric current, always burning. The numbness is my companion, and the neuropathy is my shadow, stabbing me with every step.

It isn’t the pain that defines me, nor is it the illness, the hospital visits or the uncertainty of my future. What defines me now is what kept me going when everything else seemed impossible: literature.

When I was trapped in that hospital bed and the walls were closing in, I had nothing but my imagination to keep me company. I traveled through the world of novels. I wrote, even when I had no energy to do anything else. I created stories in the margins of my notebooks, filled with characters and places that gave me hope, even when I was alone in that white-walled room.

Literature became my lifeline. I began to heal when I started to find my way back to my body. I found my way back to words.

That’s why I’m studying English now. I found strength in stories and in poems. Writing saved me, giving me a reason to keep going when all I wanted to do was give up. It gave me a place to heal, a place to belong and a way to feel whole again.

I still live with the pain. The numbness is a constant reminder of what I’ve been through.

But I’m here. And I have books to thank for that.

The worlds I’ve traveled through in literature and the stories I’ve written have given me the courage to continue. They’ve given me the strength to keep going when every step feels like a battle.

I’m not the person I was when I entered university, ready to conquer the world of STEM. I’m someone different now — someone stronger.

No matter how much pain I endure, I have the power to create, to write and to live.