It all started when...

Growing up, I always had some kind of issue. I have two brothers and a sister, and even though my sister had asthma, I was constantly getting sent home from school because of my eczema. I raked holes in my skin until I bled, and even then I wouldn't stop. I still have scars and discolorations all over my body because I was such a mess with the problems I had with my skin.

When I was 11, my mother started me in ice skating, and I loved it. I still do, even though I don't do it as much. But my parents didn't have money like the other girls parents did, so it was always a big deal for me to have the outfits and the equiment and the lessons. When I was 13 I begged my mother to let me get a job, and she told me I had to wait until I was 15, but I wanted to help pay for my lessons. I called the ice rink at the Concord Hotel and asked them if they wanted someone to give lessons to the guests.

December of 1995, I started my first job as a skating instructor at a local Jewish resort hotel. During the holiday I was making about $20 an hour, in cash, off the books. I was working full days from 10 am to 6 pm, with an hour for lunch. I totally loved it.

I was so good at it, no matter what the kid was like; bad, over zealous, clumsy, stubborn. If they didn't leave at the end of the 25 minutes knowing how to ice skate, they had so much fun. I even had a girl once with one hand, and she was so self conscious, but after 10 minutes, we were total buddies. At 14, I had so many mothers come to me and say "I can't believe it!" It was the best job ever. I must have worked myself into the ground, though.

During the week between Christmas and New Years I had a different symptom each day. At first I noticed my eyes kept that morning puffiness throughout the whole day. Then I remember having intense headaches. I remember I had flu symptoms. I was so weak and tired, I remember apologizing to a mother, and she told me I looked so horrible, that I should use the lesson time to just rest. She paid for the lesson anyway. I remember running across the mini golf area on the picks of my skates to get to the bath room to throw up. Finally, I remember trying to leave at the end of the day, and I could barely walk. I got halfway through the hotel to get to the lobby where my father would pick me up, and I had to sit on the floor. I sat there for about 20 minutes until a co-worker came along and made me get up to go the rest of the way.

1996 was a nightmare. I was the nutty professor with random parts of my body swelling up. My stomach looked pregnant, my neck swelled and disappeared. I couldn't walk because my feet swelled on the bottoms. I would wake up with my own hand prints on my legs. Visit after visit to the family doctor, to homeopathic doctors who kept me on miserable diets, until finally I got a call after some lab tests that landed me in Westchester Medical Center for three weeks.

I had MPGN, which is an inflammation of the kidneys that is most common with young people, as I was told. I went up to 160, down to 123 overnight, literally. During that time, they found ovarian systs that they thought might be causing me the worst abdominal pain I could ever imagine. I had surgery to have those removed, along with my appendix. By September, I was back to normal. By January, I was off all my medication. I thought it was all over, until two years ago when I noticed my ankles were swelling up again.