“Growing up, I was in every sport. I played soccer, volleyball and swam. I instantly loved swimming. I ended up swimming in college at the University of La Crosse. When I was younger, I always had sinus infections, but it wasn’t until high school, when I was swimming a lot, that I really noticed it. When I got to college, I was swimming way more. I was practicing 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night. I was constantly plugged up. Then one night during my freshman year, I woke up in the middle of the night, in the dorms at 3 am, and my ear felt like someone was pouring lava into it. I drove myself to the hospital and they ended up draining it and putting tubes in my ear. What’s crazy, is when I went in to have my ears looked at, the doctor said you have a pretty large bump on your throat and wanted to do some tests. She came back and told me I had a tumor on my thyroid. They went in and did a needle biopsy and luckily it was benign at the time, but it was too large to keep it in, so they ended up taking out half of my thyroid. I’ve known several people who have had to have their whole thyroid removed, so I consider myself lucky only having to have half of it removed. If I didn’t have all of this sinus stuff going on, I would’ve never known about the tumor. It was already big, so it probably could’ve grown, which is scary. I’m so glad they found it and took it out. All that’s left is the scar. Going through that entire experience made me no longer take my health for granted. I was lucky to catch it when I did and now think of my health in a much different and important way. My health means the world to me.”