Share on PinterestModel Gigi Robinson (above) shares how she’s overcome challenges from dwelling with a number of persistent situations and the way her life modified after she was identified with endometriosis. Photographs Supplied by Gigi RobinsonGigi Robinson, who lives with a number of persistent situations, was one of many Sports activities Illustrated 2022 swimsuit fashions.Robinson used the platform to lift consciousness about Ehlers-Danlos syndromes, endometriosis, and different persistent situations.Endometriosis impacts an estimated worldwide and roughly one in 10 ladies in the united statesWhen Gigi Robinson bought a name from Sports activities Illustrated in February 2022 notifying her that she was a finalist in its Swim Search, she was ecstatic.Robinson is the primary GenZ and chronically unwell girl to be featured within the journal. As a passionate affected person advocate for these dwelling with persistent situations, she embraced the platform.“I assumed if I do that, it’s not going to be about something aside from elevating the affected person voice,” she informed Healthline. “I used to be utilizing my physique because the automobile for change and wished to make it clear that you just don’t want to vary something about your self to be celebrated and that you just’re stunning simply as you might be whether or not you will have bruises or stretch marks or scars.”As a baby, Robinson bruised simply and suffered accidents attributable to sometimes innocent actions.“I . . . tore ligaments leaping off a trampoline at summer season camp, and I shattered ligaments in my wrist and fractured my elbow doing a cartwheel,” she stated. “Very unusual, easy issues had been injuring me.”After a number of visits to the emergency room at New York Presbyterian Hospital, a pediatric orthopedic physician prompt Robinson go to the orthopedic and rheumatology unit.“My mother, who labored in healthcare, discovered a tremendous pediatric orthopedic physician who thought I could have a mobility syndrome,” stated Robinson.At 11 years previous, she was identified with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a heritable connective tissue dysfunction that causes joint hypermobility, pores and skin hyperextensibility, and tissue fragility.“As a result of it had not been researched 15 years in the past, my mother did all the things she might to go to completely different webinars and seminars that had been placed on by the EDS Society and thru hospitals…however I used to be nonetheless in ache and there isn’t a remedy or remedy for it,” stated Robinson.To handle signs, she tried bodily remedy, which offered short-term aid, and medicine, which she stopped taking as a result of adverse results on her liver.Round this time, after her first interval, she additionally started experiencing migraine assaults, decrease again ache, and GI points— what she would study years later are signs of endometriosis, a situation by which cells much like the liner of the uterus or womb, develop outdoors the uterus and womb.“[It] was thoughts over matter. Go, go, go, and in a method that was a poisonous mindset when coping with well being points,” she stated.