Normally a child doesn’t have to worry about how active they are. They can go outside, run around and be a normal kid; a child full of imagination and dreaming of being a mermaid or a prince who slays the dragon. I was once that kid. I could run around and never get tired. I could do anything I imagined I could do, because that’s what kids do. I never imagined I would have to stop, check my pulse, and hope I could continue on. From a very young age, I’ve been called lazy. I would be that one girl in cheerleading or softball who wouldn’t be able to finish the lap. I would have these strange attacks where I couldn’t breathe because my heart rate was too high. At that time, I was told it was acid reflux and I should “start eating healthier to lose the weight” so I could “stop being lazy and actually be in shape.” So of course at the age of 9, I believed them. The beginning of my junior year of high school, everything changed. I started working out more, eventually losing almost fifty pounds. I’m supposed to be healthy now, right? Fifty pounds gone and you would think everything was better, right? Wrong. My symptoms grew increasingly worse. I first noticed these symptoms when I joined my high school weightlifting team. I was so excited to make the team that I vowed to myself I would work harder than I ever have just to prove to my coach that he made the right decision by putting me on that team. Everything was going great, up until conditioning day. I was a nervous wreck because I didn’t know if I would be able to finish the workout. I didn’t want any of my teammates to think of me as being lazy like I was told all those years back. Most importantly, I wanted to show myself that I could complete a tough workout. We were to run 2 laps around the track, run the bleachers 3 times, and do 1 lap of Indian runs. Halfway through the first lap, I became breathless, but I didn’t stop. When we were finally finished with