Katelyn Jenkins

I have always liked to keep myself busy and entertained constantly, but I started becoming exhausted and so stressed out that it began making an appearance on my body anytime I would overwork myself. Around 2015, I was diagnosed with PCOS and Hashimoto's, which I was only about 13 years old and very rare for young people to start developing autoimmune diseases. Very commonly, once you have one auto immune disease you begin to develop more and that started becoming apparent in the summer of 2020. I went on a beach trip and got a third degree burn from the sun, always exhausted, gained weight, rashes would appear and disappear. We could not figure out what was going on and I was finally diagnosed with Lupus and Sjogren's, which are both auto immune disease. I could not let the spunk, hard-working, full of life girl fade because I was diagnosed with things that wanted to take that away, I let my mental health strive and would only tell myself " auto immune only lets you do what you allow it to do," so ever sense then, I have not slowed down. I started working at a local boutique when I was sixteen and stayed there for about two years until I decided for myself, I wanted to pursue my degree at University of Houston Clear Lake. I wanted to keep making income, while being a full-time student, so I applied to work at Baytown Periodontics and Dental Implantology and have been there for almost a year but have been around that environment my entire life because my mom has been in that industry for 23 years! I love trying to accomplish it all and will continue to do so once I graduate and get my big girl job, but when adversity hits and trials come know to stay positive because the way you react to it is what will get you through it.