By the next February, a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the pain was so bad that she wore portable heating pads around her abdomen. Pushing through became increasingly problematic.
That fall, while rehearsing regularly, her ever-present pain increased substantially. "The nature of a conservatory theater program is you are celebrated if you have all this horrible stuff going on and you pursue your goals anyway," The extraordinary discipline required of the theatrical program inspired and - ultimately - damaged her. "I'd been dealing with so much pain and illness for so long that I was determined to just push through," she said.īut at a cost. She had been cast in a school production and preparation was intense. Treatment for her newly-diagnosed interstitial cystitis, as well as gynecological and gastrointestinal conditions, followed.īy her junior year in 2019, things were manageable, though far from comfortable. Serendipitously, this expanded view revealed lesions on the bladder, which illuminated misdiagnoses from a decade before. A suspected nicked artery led to an open incision. Louis doctor performed laparoscopic surgery. To help find the source of the physical pain, her St. Lexie was collecting enough interesting and baffling twists and turns to write her own show. You say that you're hurting, it sure doesn't show. It's like living on a cliffside not knowing when you'll dive.ĭo you know, do you know what it's like to die alive? In a case of her life imitating art - specifically, the musical, Next to Normal - her condition mirrored the severe psychological trauma of the main character, Diana Goodman, who was also surrounded by family who loved her:ĭo you wake up in the morning and need help to lift your head?ĭo you read obituaries and feel jealous of the dead? "What made the mental health issues tougher was that my parents - at the time, but no longer - also didn't believe my pain complaints because the local doctors told them there was nothing wrong, so I must be fine," she said.
There, doctors gave a fresh perspective, focusing on her physical condition rather than suggesting she was exaggerating or imagining.Īs a chronic pain sufferer, Lexie was all too aware of the psychological and emotional components of her condition. Lexie enrolled at Webster University in St. Inspired by the likes of Norm Lewis and Jenn Colella, she was heavily involved in her high school theater program, honing her singing, acting and dancing skills. "I loved performing, everything from the auditions to rehearsals to getting in front of an audience." But we are getting ahead of our story.ĭespite her debilitating pain, she found joy and satisfaction in her greatest passion: musical theater. "One of the toughest parts was that no one was taking it seriously because I was a young girl getting periods and people thought that was the issue, but I knew it wasn’t." "When I was in high school, I started having bouts of disabling pain. It was just the way I felt, day after day," said Lexie, a Florida-native who’s now a graduate student living in Chicago.
"I was so used to pain that I didn't even think about it as pain.
Dealing with a series of chronic illnesses since early high school, her biggest concern was always her generalized abdominal pain.