Debbi’s Story
With March being Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month, with more than 24 million Americans being diagnosed with one or more of the now-identified 110+ various autoimmune diseases, we’re featuring fearless Golden State Runner and Autoimmune Warrior Debbi Parrott.
Debbi teaches AP language and composition and standard English to High School Juniors in Southern California. In fact, she was inspired a year ago a fellow teacher, her AP partner at school, who is a runner. This was about a year into her autoimmune journey and was a way for her to show herself she is strong, can still do hard things in spite of her diseases.
Once Debbi started running, she began to hear about more running opportunities and races and Golden State Challenge came into her orbit. While it was too late to for her to earn the 2024 medal, she has mapped out her 2025 strategically in order to achieve her Challenge medal and prove to herself and her doctors and anyone living with autoimmune disease what is still possible.
In December of 2022 Debbi started experiencing symptoms of what turned out to be the immune system attacking her body and in this case, via the skin. The immune system normally protects us from viruses, bacteria, and other threats – and can mistakenly attack healthy cells which is what occurs in an autoimmune disorder and disease. For example, in Multiple Sclerosis, the immune system attacks the brain, in Rheumatoid Arthritis, it attacks the tissues and joints, in T1 Diabetes it attacks the pancreas. In Debbi’s case, it was attacking her skin.
Only they didn’t initially know that – autoimmune diagnoses are notorious for taking a long time and in her case, no one knew what it was. But because Debbi did a lot of her own research and was her own fierce advocate, she got a diagnosis shockingly quickly. Thankfully she happened to be working with a specialist in autoimmune blistering diseases at UCI and was able to get a diagnosis via blood work that came back positive and therefore a course of treatment that has allowed her to both embrace the course of treatment and find new ways to demonstrate her strength through running.
It took some adjusting, because typical treatment for autoimmune diseases include steroids and those are hard on the body. But Debbi, inspired by her teacher colleague and friend who runs, started running once a week. She started out with 30 minutes – including running and walking. And she also began strength and other cardio workouts – which unfortuantely produced some flareups as the body can’t also discern between good stress and bad stress.
“The body doesn’t know the difference between mental stress and physical stress” Debbi said and so she needed to adjust her approach. How much to do when, and then when to pull back.
She signed up for her first 5k in 2024 and loved it, loved the feeling of crossing the finish line and started signing up for more races. And she has found that the 5k is the prefect distance for her to see what her body can do.
She ran 7 5ks in 2024. Her main goal is to finish and with that, her fastest 5k includes a 10:17 mile – pretty spectacular for someone who wasn’t a runner in high school and has only been running for a year.
So what’s on tap for her Golden State Challenge year? She’s already run Surf City 5k in February and will join us for Surf City 10, Long Beach and Run Malibu. And in all that, she’s in the process of moving to remission – already 6 months without a flare up and has an excellent outlook.
“I’m showing what my body CAN do despite the disease!” Debbi, we are so proud of you and will be cheering you on all along the way this year!
