Laura Hillenbrand

  b. 1967 | American author

At The Bottom

— 1987

As her body withered away and she sank into a deep depression, no one could tell her what was happening.

Laura Hillenbrand was finishing her junior year at Kenyon College in Ohio, driving back to school with her boyfriend and another friend when she suddenly felt nauseated.  By the time she reached home a half hour later, she was doubled over with chills and a burning sensation in her abdomen.  Over the next few days, her condition worsened.  She could barely hold down any food, and her muscles ached terribly.  Finally, she woke up one morning to discover that she could not get out of bed.  Doctors ran test after test but were unable to discover the cause of her distress.  She took a leave from college and returned to her mother’s house in Maryland.  She had lost 20 pounds, and her lymph nodes were swollen.  “During the day,” she recalled, “I rattled with chills, but at night I soaked my clothes with sweat.  I felt unsteady, as if the ground were swaying.  My throat was inflamed and raw.  A walk to the mailbox on the corner left me so tired that I had to lie down.” She had difficulty reading words on a page and seemed incapable of focusing on a conversation long enough to understand it.  As her condition worsened, “My world narrowed down to my bed and my window.  I could no longer walk the length of my street.”  Her hair began to fall out, and her throat and mouth burned with a severe and seemingly incurable strep infection.  As her body withered away and she sank into a deep depression, no one could tell her what was happening.