I'm Susan Davidson, and my daughter is Lauren Davidson, she's 12 years old. The sweetest child. I mean, I don't have any trouble with her at all. She has always-- she's been a very healthy girl, she was a very athletic girl, she loves her dog, she loves her friends. And to see that transition in her when she was feeling so bad was very hard for me to see as a parent. 

I have a disease called GPA. It's a really technical name. granulomatosis with polyangitis. It affects your lungs and kidneys. 

In October of 2015, when her swim coach sent me a text and she said, I had to make Lauren get out of swim practice. She just-- I don't know what's wrong with her. She said she can't breathe, and her coloring looks really strange. It was about a week after her 11th birthday. She started complaining about joint pain. 

GPA is hard to diagnose because of the non-specific symptoms. This is your immune system attacking organs in your body. A lot of people will look like they have an infection. 

I would learn later she was having trouble breathing, and her oxygen was low because the disease was starting to manifest in her lungs. 

A lot of the medications we use for infection have some anti-inflammatory properties, meaning it'll decrease inflammation. So it looks like some people might be getting better, but they're in fact not getting better, and it's just putting a Band-Aid over underlying inflammation. 

Her shortness of breath, the fact that she couldn't breathe when she was doing her swim meets made her come into the hospital. 

They gave us two hospitals, and without hesitation, I said, UVA. That's where-- I've grown up in Virginia and I've only heard good things. I couldn't have been more pleased with all of the doctors-- everyone we encountered. She has seen rheumatologists, nephrologists, pulmonologists, every one of them has just been fantastic. 

Well, I had a doctor that I really liked. Her name was Dr. Charlton and she was very encouraging. And I really liked her because of her personality, kind of like mine-- it's really bouncy, just kind of fun. And so she kind of made me feel really better about the whole situation. 

I don't even think that I saw Lauren initially. I told the ICU what labs to get, and within hours, those labs came back and we had a pretty good idea of what she had. I see a lot of me in Lauren and I think that's part of why we gravitate to each other. 

Dr. Charlton has just been such a loving influence. She just cares for Lauren. And she told Lauren one time, she said, you have a tiger living inside of you. That tiger is either in its cage or it's out of its cage. And my job is to try to keep that tiger in the cage. 

Her quality of life should be that of another girl her age. So for someone that was that sick and had to be poked and prodded so much, she did great. 

UVA. That was an easy decision and it turned out to be the best decision we ever made.