In eighth grade, Halle Brown (11) was sitting in math class when suddenly, everything stopped. Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t see. And although she had just been listening, she couldn’t hear. All her senses had left her. 

Unable to speak or move, she sat paralyzed while the class continued as if nothing was happening. After 10 seconds, she jumped back to reality.

“It felt like when you zone out in class and then suddenly refocus,” Brown said. “I wasn’t afraid, I just was kind of like, okay, this is different. It stopped, so I didn’t worry about it and went back to paying attention in class.”

But the next day, at the same time, it happened again.

And again.

And again. 

By the time it had become a daily occurrence, Brown mentioned it to her mom. Concerned, her mom called a friend who was a nurse to ask for advice. 

“She said it sounded like absent seizures,” Brown said. “We ended up going to the hospital that day.”

At first, they went to a hospital in Lansing, but were told that there wasn’t much that could be done immediately. The earliest Brown could get an MRI was a month out. 

But in the time she waited for her MRI, her condition grew severe. 

“I started to have seizures three times during the day, and around five times at night,” Brown said. “I couldn’t sleep or focus in class, so I started to miss school.”

Eventually, the MRI couldn’t wait. Brown was taken to the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. 

“I was able to get testing done in the ER there, and the next day they told me I had epilepsy,” Brown said.

After she was diagnosed, Brown took a break from school to find an effective treatment plan for her epilepsy. She began taking an anti-seizure medication.

“The first medication worked for about a month, and then I started having seizures again,” Brown said. “The second medication I tried did nothing. It actually made me break out in hives, so I had to stop taking that one as well.”

By the time she started her third medication, Brown was running out of options. If they couldn’t find a medication that worked, she would need brain surgery. 

But luckily, the third medication was a success. The seizures she’d been having consistently stopped almost immediately. With her life back on track, Brown gradually returned to school and finished the remainder of the school year with her friends. 

But that summer, only months after her epilepsy had stabilized, the sense of normalcy she had just fought to reclaim would slip through her fingers once more. 

The day it started, she dismissed it as cramps. She had already had one health crisis; what were the odds of having a second? She hadn’t even turned 15 yet.

She lay in bed all day, sleeping to ignore the sharp aches in her stomach. By morning, it would all be better. 

But it wasn’t. 

Within days, the pain had grown so severe that Brown struggled to sleep or walk.

“There were times my dad had to carry me to my bed because moving hurt so bad,” Brown said. “We didn’t wait more than a week before going to the ER because it was so extreme.”

It took three different hospital trips and six months before Brown was even able to get a diagnosis.

“At first I went to McLaren, and they told me I was just constipated,” Brown said. “And then I went to Sparrow, and their GI doctor was on vacation for a whole month, so I had to go to Ann Arbor again.”

After extensive testing, including an MRI and ultrasound, she was finally diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in January of 2024.

Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the bowel. The immune system attacks the lining of the large intestine, causing open sores, internal bleeding and swelling. Any food that passes through the damaged bowel triggers further irritation and severe pain. 

“It was like I had to start all over again,” Brown said. “I was finally back to normal and could do what I wanted, and then I was back to being in the hospital a lot, not seeing my friends and missing school.”

In an attempt to hold on to normalcy, Brown attended school as much as possible her freshman year. But her condition persisted through the summer and into her sophomore year. About a month into her sophomore year, Brown knew her body couldn’t do it anymore. 

“It was too hard to balance both,” Brown said. “I had to go online for the rest of the year.”

But withdrawing from school was far from easy. While her friends stood with smiling, painted faces in the stands of a football game, Brown sat in a hospital bed. 

She watched from afar as they carpooled to volleyball practice, complained about schoolwork and laughed together at sleepovers.

“It felt like I was missing out on a whole year of my teenage life,” Brown said.

Putting her life on pause was hard, but it proved to be the right decision. Stepping away from school gave her the time she needed to heal. 

After her diagnosis, the road to recovery was long. Brown initially started a medication called Inflectra, which required a weekly hospital visit for infusions. 

“That medication worked for a while, but then it wasn’t working as well,” Brown said. “So I started Solara, which is an injection I get at home every month.”

Two months into taking Solara, Brown started to notice a difference. Slowly, her condition began to improve. The constant pain she had been experiencing for the last two years became less constant, and by the end of her sophomore year, her flare-ups steadied.

By the summer of 2025, Brown felt like her life was her own again. And with both her epilepsy and ulcerative colitis controlled, she was able to begin this school year, her junior year, with the rest of her classmates. She’s now back to making weekend plans, playing volleyball and walking the halls with her friends. 

Although fear is bound to linger—after countless trips to the ER and multiple life-altering diagnoses, all before graduating high school. She knows how quickly life can change. But she also knows not to dwell on what could go wrong. 

Going through it all has taught her to focus on what she can control. Sometimes life has to be taken one day at a time.

“It’s important to know that it will get better and you will find a way to live your life to the fullest,” Brown said.