By Emerald Shaab ’25
POTS-narcolepsy-asthma-dysautonomia-migraines-and multiple allergies. These are all of the issues that Conestoga Valley high school senior Sarah Herrold has had to carry with her throughout her life. Sarah has been dealing with her physical disabilities since she was born, with the symptoms ebbing and flowing. From the moment she was born, she was already having complications.
“When I was first born, I was a really tiny baby,” Herrold said “I was allergic to eggs and milk and basically everything. Then I developed failure to thrive, and I was not growing. They brought me to the doctor, and the doctor was running a million tests on me, and they found out that I was not breaking down my enzymes correctly.”
She has also had multiple incidents throughout her school years that have caused her a lot of mental strain and even anxiety, just while she was very young.
“In kindergarten, I had an asthma attack and I almost died,” Herrold said. “I was in the hospital for three days, and when I came back I went to school and everyone was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we thought you died,’ and that really was crazy to me because I didn’t realize that I was dying, or that I could have even died until they said that to me. I had an existential crisis at five years old in kindergarten, which was very stressful.”
All of these hardships have caused struggles with mental health. Although sometimes she feels strongly upset about these issues, she says that she has a great support system consisting of her sister and best friend Elizabeth Herrold, her brother Kole Herrold, as well as close friends Emerald Shaab, Brooke Buckwalter, Abigail Rohr, and Cayden Maxwell.
She has had many struggles with having different medications, new doctors, heart monitors and more.
“I’ve had five or six heart monitors,” Sarah Herrold said. “I’ve had them anywhere from a week to a whole month of having a heart monitor, which is absolute hell.”
Sarah went on to say that during her sophomore prom, she had to wear a heart monitor which was visible in all pictures. She has had many doctors, cardiologists, pulmonologists, neurologists and more throughout the years, which can be stressful to handle .
Sarah recognizes all of these hardships and hard times that she’s gone through and what ways are best to deal with them. One of these is by not doing things that cause her mental and physical strain.
“When I was at my hardest time I was really struggling and I was still pushing myself to do stuff that I used to do, when I physically could not,” Herrold said.
Even though Sarah must deal with juggling so many health problems along with going through high school, she remains positive with her outlook on life and goes her own way no matter what others say. She is strong and independent and believes that, although she shouldn’t push herself, she can do anything she sets her mind to, even beating the odds and having a healthy and successful future.