By Rachel Harris ’18 | Copy Editor

Another runner passes the one mile mark, and Emma Edwards ’17 is right there cheering and yelling out split times. As each of over 120 girls on the cross country team approach Edwards, her smile and encouragement never wavers.

Edwards, a track and cross country manager, is not able to run due to three autoimmune disease, she said. Edwards has had Celiac disease since second grade, which involves her body not being able to process gluten without damaging her small intestine, she said.

“I also have something called dysautonomia, and that is where your body attacks the autonomic nervous system,” Edwards said. “Your autonomic system controls everything you do automatically without thinking about it. You don’t think about breathing, you just breathe whether you’re thinking about it or not.”

Edwards said she has a hard time breathing because her autonomic system doesn’t always tell herself to breathe, along with digesting food and having her heart beat properly.

“I also have myasthenia gravis, which is an autoimmune disease that attacks the citicoline receptors in your brain, which control your muscle functions, like swallowing, talking, moving your eyes around and walking,” Edwards said.

Edwards did not discover that she had these autoimmune diseases until sophomore year, she said.

“The beginning of sophomore year I was fine, and then the beginning of October I started getting really dizzy and I could not stand up without passing out or blacking out,” Edwards said. “Nobody knew why.”

Edwards said she still tried to go to school, but ending up missing a lot of days. Eventually, it got so bad that she could not stand up or walk around or think.

“We started doing homebound schooling, but I couldn’t even do schoolwork,” Edwards said. “We went all around the country trying to find doctors who knew, but because everything I have is so rare and not many people have heard of it, I didn’t end up getting much help until May.”

From October until May, Edwards said she didn’t know what was going on. However, it wasn’t until spring that she tried a medicine a doctor recommended. There weren’t any other options or support to back it up, but doctors still chose to try it.  

“It is fast acting, so 20 minutes after I took that medicine, I felt amazing,” Edwards said. “I could talk and I could walk and I could move around again. That’s when they figured out what it was.”

Edwards said that it is hard looking back on these eight months, and she didn’t really know what was going on.

“I was oblivious. I missed my whole sophomore year of high school,” Edwards said. “I’m trying to make up school now.”

Sophomore year, Edwards played JV Volleyball, but she stopped playing because she had trouble standing up and doing a lot of physical activities, she said. It was then that she decided to join the cross country and track team as a manage.

“I just kind of helped out with the team and I was not able to run,” Edwards said. “I actually started high jumping at the beginning of the season and I really like that, except even the eight steps that you have to run for that was getting too much. I was having a bunch of breathing issues and so I had to stop for a little bit.”

Marie High ‘17, a teammate of Edwards and also a manager of the cross country team due to an injury, did a lot for the team that the team didn’t know about. She did a lot of filling in rosters, taking times for people, and did a lot of cheering.

“Having a friend being the manager shows you the inner pieces of what goes into it instead of just being the runner and just running a race and having your time show up.”

Julianna Leonard ‘19, a member of the cross country and track team, said that Edwards puts in a lot of time and hard work into helping out with the team.

“She is very supportive and is always yelling at you in a positive way when you are running,” Leonard said. “She yells encouraging messages as you run and it helps when you are tired because you know someone is there watching you.”

All of the time that goes into the recording of the times and cataloging it is done by Edwards and the coaches, High said.

“It gave me a huge sense of appreciation for what she did, and even though she wasn’t a runner on the team, she was just as much on the team as anyone else,” High said. “It gave you an appreciation for what you can do and her positive energy definitely helped everything because she was so positive all of the day.”