10 years ago today, I fainted for the first time in my life.

I was 15 years old, on my way to my second class of the day, when the world went fuzzy and I awoke to a crowd of faces leaning over me. Sweat beaded at my forehead and coated my upper lip; my heart felt weak, light, and fast in my chest. My teacher asked me if I was okay. I laughed nervously. Then passed out again.

That first faint was blamed on my period, which at the time had become unmanageably heavy and painful. I was sent home from school, saw my GP that afternoon, and was started on the pill. I fainted again two weeks later. Not on my period.

After that, the fainting never stopped. I tried to continue going to school but spent more time in the medical room with an ice pack on my head than I did in class. When I did go to class, I slept more than I studied. As the fainting ramped up, I noticed for the first time how ill I always seemed to be compared to my classmates. Over the past two years my attendance had steadily been dropping due to issues of migraines, allergies, constant colds, and unusually extreme growing pains. A few weeks after the fainting began, I was diagnosed with Vasovagal Syndrome, which I was told I would grow out of after my teenage years.

When November rolled around, I was too ill to leave my house. I slept up to 20 hours a day, could barely move when I was awake, and my brain felt like cold mush, unable to form any coherent thought. At this point, after a barrage of ECGs, echoes, MRIs, blood tests, and physical exams, I was informed my diagnosis of Vasovagal Syndrome was incorrect. I was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.), instead.

M.E. is a chronic neurological disease that affects multiple body systems and boasts a long list of symptoms including fatigue, insomnia, flu-like symptoms, pain, headaches, cognitive impairment, post-exertional malaise, and more. It is often known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) – a name I loathe as it reduces a complex, multi-system illness to the phrase “I get tired, too!”.

The next few years crawled along in a sedate no man’s land. With no treatment for M.E., I wasted away at home, my health deteriorating further each day. I was too sick to continue school and couldn’t take my exams, so I was forced to drop out with no qualifications. Before leaving, I begged the school to tutor me at home so I could at least gain my National 5s in English and maths. I was told there was no money to educate me. I had gone from being an A student who dreamed of going to university to a high-school dropout with no education.

By 17, I was completely housebound, often bedbound, and had lost all my friends as illness was boring and didn’t fit in with their lives. I desperately missed learning and felt left behind and forgotten as I watched all my former classmates post their exam results and university acceptance letters. So, I turned to The Open University.

Over a quarter of OU students, around 38,000 learners, report having a disability. With OU’s home-study system and excellent disability accommodations and support, they are perfectly suited for disabled students. During my one-to-one sessions with their career counsellor, OU informed me of all the options open to me as a young, chronically ill student with no formal qualifications. They completely understood my circumstances and were happy for me to begin studying at university level – even as a high school dropout. In October 2017, I officially began studying a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Creative Writing.

Returning to education gave me back the purpose and joy that had been stripped from me when I became ill. With my newly rediscovered sense of self, I began the process of rebuilding my life in illness. I made new friends, mostly through online chronic illness and disability support groups. On Bonfire Night 2017, I joined a Facebook group for chronically ill teenagers and messaged a girl named Emily, who was also new to the group. To this day, Emily is my closest friend – even though we’ve still never met in person, as we’re both too sick to travel the 400 miles separating us.

Through these online support groups, I began to learn more about other people’s experiences with chronic illness, M.E. in particular. I realised that most people who have M.E. do not faint as much as I do. So, I went back to my GP with a query: "do I have PoTS?"

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, otherwise known as PoTS, is a dysautonomic condition that causes tachycardia, low blood pressure, fainting, chest pain, shortness of breath, blood pooling, weakness, and more. Not a lot is known about PoTS, but it is common in people with M.E.

At 18, three and a half years after I began fainting, I was formally diagnosed with PoTS. Unlike my M.E. diagnosis, my PoTS diagnosis brought medication. For the first time since I got sick, I started a medication treatment that worked. With my new best friends, propranolol and fludrocortisone, I no longer felt like my heart would break through my ribcage every time I moved.

My new-found strength meant the start of a new adventure: performing spoken word poetry. Back in my school-less days, wasting away in my bed while everyone I knew was in class, I discovered my love for poetry. I spent my time watching spoken word performances on YouTube and reading poetry collections. I began writing my own poetry and at 15, I wrote the first piece I truly liked called Brain Fog.

The summer I turned 17, I started attending spoken word nights in Glasgow. The first night I attended is a staple in the Scottish poetry scene: Poetry at Inn Deep. Sat outside under the arch, with the backdrop of Kelvin River, I watched people perform in person for the first time. I fell in love with the performers, the place, the people in the audience with me. When I went home that night, I wrote a new poem in one sitting and so Fainting Girl was born.

I continued attending poetry nights in Glasgow for the next couple years, but I was far too nervous to perform any of my own poems. I felt young, inexperienced, and terrified of baring my soul to a room full of strangers – or even worse, a room full of family and friends. But the summer I turned 19, feeling the need for change after a breakup, I decided to bite the bullet and perform. On July 10^th 2019, in an all-vegan restaurant with plush blue chairs and decadent cheesecake, I performed Fainting Girl for the first time.

After that first night, I became a regular at Soul Food Kitchen’s monthly poetry night and began performing around Glasgow at QMU, The Dam, and the place that started my love all those years ago: Inn Deep.

I was beginning to find my stride: performing regularly, making friends with fellow poets, filling my notes app with ideas, and writing a new poem at least every week – not all of them made it out of my journal. Then Covid hit.

Suddenly, I was back to being completely housebound – only this time, I wasn’t alone. The world shut down, but unlike most people I knew how to live a fulfilling life from my bedroom. But still, I mourned the new life I had built for myself. I missed seeing my new friends, being surrounded by poetry, and the buzz of life outside of illness.

While stuck at home again, I returned to my favourite place: the online chronic illness community. Cozied up in bed, drinking tea, and binge-watching disabled YouTuber, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, I stumbled on a video she made about living with Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS). Listening to her experiences of hEDS, I felt like I was looking in a mirror. I finally had an answer for the symptoms that my diagnoses of M.E. and PoTS couldn’t explain.

Hypermobile EDS is a type of Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes, a group of rare, genetic conditions characterised by joint hypermobility and fragile, stretchy skin. Its long list of symptoms includes loose, unstable joints, frequent subluxations and dislocations, chronic pain and clicking joints, mitral valve prolapse, and a likeliness to develop PoTS.

In February 2021, I was officially diagnosed with hEDS. Unlike my other diagnoses, hEDS brought a finality: I’ll never get better. Both M.E. and PoTS are long-term illnesses that have very low recovery rates; yet, the chance of recovery, however slight, had always hung over me. Subconsciously, I had been spending my life waiting to get better. My hEDS diagnosis took that possibility away. The genetic mutation that caused my illness could never be fixed. It wasn’t until the possibility of recovery was stripped away that I realised how tiring it was waiting to be healthy again.

With my new diagnosis, I made some life changes. I moved away from my inaccessible third-floor flat in Glasgow to a much more disability-friendly bungalow on the Ayrshire coast. I bought an electric wheelchair to gain more independence and started using my walking stick more regularly. I was building myself up again, figuring out how to best support my body so I could live my life to the fullest. Then I caught Covid for the first time.

Somewhat miraculously, I managed to avoid catching Covid for almost two years. But my luck ran out when for Christmas 2021, my sister gifted me a positive PCR test. I’ve often joked that my lungs are my only functioning body system, and thankfully they managed well under the stress of Covid. The rest of my body, however, crumbled.

Covid threw my hEDS, PoTS, and M.E. into overdrive during and after my bout with the virus. I could barely stand without passing out, I was constantly sleeping, the only time I got out of bed was to go to the bathroom – and each time I had to crawl there as I couldn’t walk. At 22, after living with chronic illness for seven years, I was the sickest I had ever been. I couldn’t eat; my weight withered to a mere 47kg. I could barely talk. Most devasting to me, I lost the one constant that had stayed with me through various flare ups: I could no longer study with The Open University. My brain was in a constant stage of fog. I couldn’t understand anything I read, never mind try to write anything. So, I was forced to make the agonising decision to defer my studies for a year, unsure if I would ever be able to return.

2022 was the first time I truly believed that my illness would kill me. For months, I lay staring at my ceiling, sure it would be the last thing I would ever see. My mother left work entirely to care for me. My sister spent the nights asleep on my floor so I wouldn’t be alone. My stepdad drove me to and from hospital, as I spent more and more time there. In August, after a barrage of painful and invasive tests looking for cancer or yet another chronic illness, I was told that all my issues were caused by the worsening of my hEDS, most likely because of Covid. I was started on a new medication and sent home to live, die, or exist somewhere in between.

The following months went by slowly, with an eerie familiarity; suddenly, I was a teenager again, sick, lonely, out of education, and unable to leave my bed. Gradually, I began rebuilding myself. My medication took effect, I was able to eat more, I could get out of bed more often. All in time for my sister to regift me Covid for Christmas 2022.

Thankfully, with my new treatments, Covid didn’t hit me quite so hard the second time and I was able to continue my progress of getting my life back. In October 2023, I returned to my university course for my final year. I was taken aback by how difficult I found it. It took considerably more mental effort to understand my textbooks and I often found myself rereading the same paragraph upwards of five times. It was during this year that I made a crucial mistake in an assignment for the first time – I read the question wrong and subsequently wrote a fairly incomplete essay on Hamlet. I still managed to nab a B though, so all things considered it was a strange yet substantial achievement. In May 2024, I graduated from The Open University with a first-class BA in English Literature and Creative Writing. I was no longer an out-of-education teenager who felt stupid and left behind watching my former classmates’ achievements. I was a university-educated woman with first-class honours. And so, after seven long years, my undergraduate journey with OU came to an end; just in time for my next adventure: getting a service dog.

Throughout my years in the online chronic illness community, I had seen multiple people with service dogs of various kinds: guide dogs, hearing dogs, autism dogs, etc. In 2021, I began researching the process of getting an assistance dog and found Medical Detection Dogs, a charity that trains dogs to detect oncoming medical episodes using the dog’s sense of smell. In 2022, amid the worst year of my life, I applied to MDD. What followed was years of waitlists, paperwork, interviews, home visits, and appointments. Then in May 2024, two days before my 24^th birthday, I was invited to MDD’s centre in Milton Keynes, where I met Coco.

Coco was the last dog I met at my handling day at MDD. Before Coco, I met a small terrier named Lyra who was training to be a nut allergy dog. I then got to practice training commands with demo dogs Herbert, a black and white spaniel with the softest ears, and Bobbin, a boisterous yellow lab who was determined to fit every toy in his mouth at once. Next, I met a young brown lab called Duke, who could not understand my Scottish accent so decided to chew on lots of grass instead of listening to my commands. After Duke, I met Tashi, a sweet yellow lab who was already paired with another PoTS client and was waiting to join her new home and family. Then, as the day wound down, it was time to take the dogs on a trip to Morrison’s to practice public access. Sitting in the back of the car, waiting to go, I met Coco.

An excited, bubbly, black lab with the cutest little overbite jumped into the boot of the car and accosted Tashi with kisses. When Coco noticed I was sitting in the backseat, she stuck her nose to the dog guard and licked my fingers. I fell in love with her instantly.

At Morrison’s, Coco and I walked around the shop together, practicing how to navigate in public with a service dog. I learned how to give her commands, when to give her treats, and how to spot distractions. As we wheeled down the baking aisle, Coco stuck her nose in a ripped-open bag of flour that had fallen to the floor. When I told her to “leave it”, she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and a powdery white nose. It was then I knew I wanted her to be mine.

A month after our handling session at the centre, Coco came to stay with me for our first home stay. We got to know each other better, spending the summer days training in my back garden, exploring the near-by beach, and going out to shops and cafes. Towards the end of Coco’s first home stay, we were lying on my bed, cuddling and watching Law and Order SVU, when suddenly she jumped up and ran to the door, whining. Confused, my sister and I looked at one another and took her out to the garden, thinking she needed the toilet. In the garden, I fainted. This was Coco’s first alert.

During Coco’s second home stay a few weeks later, she learned my unique PoTS scent while I learned how to read her alert behaviours. At first, her alerts were timid, unsure, and mostly directed at her trainer, Flo. But as we got more comfortable with one another and strengthened our bond, she became bolder. She touched her nose to my leg and arms, stared into my eyes intensely, whined, backed away, and refused to be touched. When she alerted, I lay down and waited for the familiar feeling of dizziness to wash over me; only now, with Coco, I didn’t fall when I passed out.

Coco came to live with me full time in September 2024. She was still in training as we worked hard to reach the requirements to become a fully qualified partnership. Every day we did training activities at home, went out to shops and cafes to strengthen Coco’s public access, and explored the fields, beaches, and woods that surrounded my home. Thanks to Coco, I managed to take the train for the first time in eight years, I was able to be left at home alone, I could leave the house on my own, shower by myself, and go out to meet friends. For the first time in years, I was becoming independent. I no longer needed my parents or my sister with me every waking hour in case I fainted and injured myself. Coco kept me safe. And in April 2025, after passing her accreditation exam with flying colours, Coco became a fully qualified service dog – and more importantly, officially mine forever.

I have a lot of wonderful memories from my first year with Coco, but one of my favourites is something I never would have managed without her: attending the launch night of my debut poetry collection, Fainting Girl.

After I graduated from university, I dedicated my energy to getting my writing out into the real world. I submitted my poem, Fainting Girl, to an anthology of work by Quiet Island (formerly known as Speculative Books) – the indie publishing company run by none other than Sam Small, the poet who hosted Poetry at Inn Deep. A few weeks after sending off my submission, Sam emailed me back with his congratulations – my poem had been accepted. And he wanted to publish a full collection of my work.

I sent Sam the manuscript I had been quietly working on since I was 19 and so began the next few months of edits, more edits, cover design, and even more edits. Until finally, she was ready.

On the 11^th of March 2025 at Inn Deep Bar, the place I had first fallen in love with spoken word poetry, I launched my own collection of poems. I looked out into the crowd filled with friends, family, poets I knew, and poets I didn’t. I sold out every book I had that night and felt surreal as I scribbled my signature on the first page. All the while, Coco lay beside me, trying to smell every book I handed over. In the months since the launch, I’ve seen my book stocked in independent bookshops in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

So now, on August 17^th 2025, 10 years after fainting for the first time, I find myself looking back at everything I’ve lost and everything I’ve gained. I’ll never get back those years of missed education, months spent asleep, friends who left me behind, hundreds of cancelled plans, and hours of hospital visits. But without those losses, I wouldn’t have the most incredible achievements of my life: graduating university with first-class honours, becoming a published poet, and falling in love with the most amazing assistance dog I could have ever asked for.

10 years from now, I’ll have a new list of losses and gains in my life with chronic illness. I can only hope that, like now, the gains outweigh the losses tenfold.

My poetry collection, Fainting Girl, is available for purchase online at my store or in person at Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh and Good Press in Glasgow. For August 17^th only you can get Fainting Girl 10% off online.

If you would like to better the life of someone like me, please consider donating to Medical Detection Dogs to train more super sniffers like Coco.