Addeson Stanley was just like any other high schooler. She danced 20 hours a week, she hung out with friends, she got good grades in various honors and AP classes. Then her life was changed.

With a single diagnosis in May of 2021 of infectious mononucleosis (Mono), her life was altered forever.

Since then, Stanley has been diagnosed with four different diseases that have somersaulted from her initial Mono diagnosis almost two years ago. Her main diagnosis is gastroparesis which loosely translates to a paralyzed stomach. This leaves her without the ability to digest food and dependent on a feeding tube to get the necessary nutrition. She also has postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS) which increases her heart rate significantly when moving positions, eating, coughing, showering, standing, walking and going upstairs.

Stanley is in remission from complex regional pain syndrome or CPRS which is nicknamed the “suicide disease” because so many people commit suicide because of the pain. An epidemiological study on CRPS has reported that 49.3% of patients with CRPS considered suicide and that the actual suicide attempt rate was 15.1%. 

She also suffers from debilitating migraines where she, on occasion, loses function in one side of her body. She has had a constant headache since her original mono diagnosis, and she has three stages of headaches. “My baseline, which I’d say is a 5/10 pain … then to a pretty bad headache at like 7/10 pain and then I get the migraine … 9/10 pain,” said Stanley. 

Now, Stanley attends the University of Denver on a pre-physician’s assistant track with a biology major. She wants to go into gastroenterology as a physician’s assistant (PA) and in pediatrics because “that’s the place and people that have helped me the most.” She has the tough issue of managing her coursework and illnesses. 

“The time I spend in school is either doing school, or homework, or just resting,” said Stanley. 

She has been making the most of her time in college doing things with her roommates or friends during the times she feels best, which is earlier in the day. Since she lives just 15 minutes from DU’s campus, she goes home often and she says her mom is her best friend.

Stanley loves tattoos, piercings and other body modifications which is a “way for me to control my physical appearance because I can’t control my feeding tube or my central line or my scars or how my body looks.”

When Stanley was asked to describe herself, she responded with “caring, optimist and positive.”  Her main goal as of right now is to get her health stable and enjoy college aligning herself with those three words.

She has over 4,000 followers on her TikTok and Instagram, where she posts a lot of content that is dedicated to her chronically ill journey. She uses these for advocacy and exposure geared toward other chronically ill college students. 

“I’ve had some people tell me that they really enjoy seeing my content or just makes them feel less alone seeing me with my feeding tube especially since I am a college student, and I am living on campus,” said Stanley. 

Stanley and her other chronically ill friends collectively agree that “being sick brings out the child in you because a lot of the time you are scared” and they are getting through that with the help of stuffed animals. She gets one for every big medical event she has and has recently gotten one for “my one-year tube anniversary and then I got one when I was really struggling and needed something to just cheer me up.” 

She continues to be active in the DU community and has big goals for the remainder of her freshman year and through the rest of her college experience. Though her university experience doesn’t look like most peoples’, she takes it day to day in hopes of getting her health stable soon.