“I'm Madelyn, and I wear the zebra stripe necklace for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome awareness. EDS is a connective tissue disease meaning anything in your body with connective tissue is affected, like your digestive system, skin, blood vessels, joints, and more. Even though EDS is an all-encompassing disease, it takes most people decades to get diagnosed, if they even get diagnosed at all. It took me nearly 18 years to get diagnosed, and that only happened since I pushed doctors for a year to figure out what was wrong with me. AWARE to me means that people with chronic conditions aren't pushed aside and unrecognized. We aren't "those people" with chronic illnesses, we're the people you pass at the store, the person you go to school with, and the extended family member you see every other year. We're living amongst you, and that's not going to change!” @chronicallymadelyn