My name is Athena Giorbolini, and for 15 years I struggled with a disease known as

Hydrogenitis Sepuritiva.

So right around puberty, like 13, 14, I started noticing these tiny little pimples appear in between my thighs, my underwear line.

I had a couple in my armpits.

So at 21, one day I was having this kind of growing pain.

I had to go to a doctor because it just wasn't going away.

And he told me that what I had was a peri-anal abscess.

And he looked at me straight in the eyes and said,

peri-anal abscesses are caused by poor hygiene.

And if you want to stop them from happening again, you need to take better care of yourself.

A decade goes by, and Athena still doesn't know or understand what's happening to her body.

It was watching my body start to deform by itself.

Like, it was doing it to itself.

And I couldn't do anything to stop it.

No matter what I changed in my life, it was just becoming its own thing on my body.

I got married, but I didn't talk about it with anyone.

But when her husband fell seriously ill and immunocompromised,

Athena worried she would expose him to risk because of her so-called infections.

That's what made her return to the doctor for the first time in seven years.

So the first doctor visit that I went to, the doctor takes a look at it and says, it's

Mersin, which is some sort of infection.

But he gives me a prescription and he says, if this doesn't clear up in five days, come

...