Laura was 32 and in the gym five days a week when her knees started hurting. Five months later she was diagnosed with GPA on a hospital ward. What moved it along was her mother.
Laura has a 10k race in October. She signed up to this to mark two years since her diagnosis.
She tries to walk most mornings before work, though she wants it on the record that she's a fair-weather walker. "If it's raining, I don't go."
Two years ago she could barely put her own clothes on.
Before this she was in the gym five or six times a week, sometimes twice a day, with two runs on top. "I was this person that would never, ever need rest, because I wasn't tired. Life was just 100 miles an hour, and that's how I liked it."
In May 2024 her knees started hurting. She was 32, and she assumed she'd overdone it. "I'm sure as everyone does, the pain will pass, so it will be fine."
In August she woke the morning after a wedding with feet too swollen to stand on. X-rays showed nothing. A physio told her it was overused muscles.
So she stopped going to the gym. "They know what they're talking about."
She rested and it kept spreading. Feet, knees, ankles, then knuckles, wrists, elbows, shoulders. "I was struggling to walk. Putting clothes on was really painful."
Her doctor suggested tablets, and creams.
Around the same time her nose went dry and runny at once. That got put down to the air conditioning at her office, and she was given a spray. Then she started bleeding between her periods. She got one appointment for it but it was never resolved until things got bad.
"Sometimes you feel a little bit silly going to the doctors. You almost feel like, are they just going to tell me to rest, or drink a bit more water?"
By September she wasn't eating or drinking. "I can't live like this. I was in so much pain."
So she made another appointment and brought her mother.
"I took my mum, because I was like, I just need someone else to help me push."
She got the referral that day. Rheumatology, the 15th of November. It was September.
"I'm finally being listened to. But then I was like, how am I going to carry on living how I am for another two months before I'm even seen."
The same GP suggested she move in with her parents, who have a walk-in shower and could help her get dressed.
"I can't believe I actually lived like that for a few months. It was just mental."
Then it went fast. Her gums swelled and an emergency dentist called it gum disease. That weekend she got tonsillitis badly enough for A&E, where she was given more antibiotics.
That week was the worst of it. "I was just almost like not living. I was just existing."
The next weekend she woke with a whooshing in her head and genuinely didn’t feel well at all. "This isn't right. There's something really wrong here."
111 sent her to A&E. Her resting heart rate was 132. "I think my body was just actually just giving up on me."
She was admitted for ten nights, having never spent one in hospital before. Her tonsils were the loudest problem in the room, and mash and ice cream were all she could get down.
Doctors kept arriving with answers. One said glandular fever. Another found nodules on her lungs and couldn't rule out cancer. Then a doctor she hadn't met introduced herself as being from rheumatology and said she had vasculitis. GPA.
"I should know how to pronounce the full word for GPA, but it's so complicated."
Granulomatosis with polyangiitis. She'd never heard of it, and neither has anyone she's told since. She never made it to the appointment on the 15th of November.
Five months, start to finish, and Laura is the one who calls that the lucky part. "I don't know how I would have survived if I had to have waited."
Some kidney damage, high blood pressure because of it, a hole in her nose. A few tablets, an inhaler, a spray, rinses, and a rituximab infusion every six months.
"That's one of my worst worries, that my nose is going to collapse." Her consultant says it shouldn't if she keeps up the rinses, and she has decided to leave it there. "If it happens, it happens."
What runs her days is the part nobody can see. "My biggest symptom is fatigue. I get wiped out so easily. That whole not being able to do what I used to do."
In October 2025, a year on from the ward, she ran a half marathon. "Today I ran a half marathon. This time last year I was attached to an IV machine in hospital because I was so ill."
It wiped her out for weeks, and she knew it would. "I just felt like I needed to do that to myself, that it hadn't sort of taken over my life."
Newly diagnosed, she went looking for others who had it, and what she found frightened her. "It just made me feel like, oh God, is that the life I'm going to live?"
She hadn't planned on an Instagram account. She started one anyway, aimed at the person she was that week, and she is careful about what she promises there. I’m happy to get to share my day to day like with Vasculitis and reach out to others who are in similar situations. It’s make me feel less alone!
"Not as good as it was. But it can be better."
Asked what she'd tell someone still in that stretch, she doesn't reach for anything inspirational.
"If you feel something isn't right, push. If you don't push, then you're almost just going to be stuck with where you are."
The 10k is in October. She hasn't started training. "That's not that far away."
Two years ago, Laura needed her mum to help her push for an answer. Now she's pushing herself towards a finish line.
She doesn't know yet how long the 10k will take, or how much it will hurt, or how tired she'll be afterwards.
But she knows something she didn't know two years ago.
She can keep moving forward. She’s got this!
