By Kallejhay Terrelonge
Belmont resident Annie Veo completed her 14-week clinical rotation at Boston Children’s Hospital last year, treating children recovering from brain surgery, spinal fusion, hip injuries and broken bones. Some were in the intensive care unit; others were relearning how to walk.
Fifteen years ago, Veo was one of them.
For more than a decade, Annie battled a rare autoimmune disease that temporarily took her sight and mobility, forcing her to relearn how to walk.
“I used to yell at my physical therapist because I didn’t want to get out of bed,” said Annie, 25. “It was too hard.”
But those years in therapy shaped her career and inspired her to help people facing similar challenges.
“After everything I went through, being a physical therapist was all I ever wanted because it helped to change my life,” she said.
Annie took the licensing exam and waited.
On Tuesday, Feb. 3, a few minutes before 5 p.m., her phone buzzed with a staccato text from an elated friend: “I passed.”
Annie and her mother, Mora Veo, were in Miami, a post-exam vacation designed to decompress. She was shocked because the results of the physical therapy licensing exam were not supposed to be released until the following day.
Annie and her mother sprinted up to their motel room. She opened the exam website, but the page would not load.
With her mother looking over her shoulder, Annie clicked the page again. Nothing. Again, nothing. Then, at exactly 5:15 p.m., the word “Passed” appeared.
“Me and my mom were screaming and jumping up and down, hugging each other,” she said. “It felt like everything I ever worked for finally came through.”
Annie’s mother, Mora, said her daughter’s childhood symptoms were mysterious and frightening.
“They really did not have much information on why she kept having episodes,” she said.
This included recurring vision loss, severe headaches, neck and back pain, and weakness that sometimes left her unable to walk.
“I would lose my peripheral vision one eye at a time, and it would switch back and forth,” Annie said.
Doctors initially diagnosed her with meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes around the brain and spinal cord, because her symptoms closely mimicked the disease. But treatments did not resolve her condition, and over time, she lost her ability to walk. A decade later, at age 20, specialists determined she had myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody disease, or MOG, a rare autoimmune disorder that affects the optic nerve and central nervous system.
“I had to relearn how to walk again and just build up my strength to kind of live a normal life,” Annie said.
Despite constant pain, multiple hospital admissions lasting weeks at a time, and uncertainty about her future, Annie kept up with her studies. Exhausted, with a body betraying her, she forced herself to attend classes, navigate hallways with limited vision, and complete assignments when she could barely keep her eyes open.
“I don’t think I fully understood everything that was happening, but I just knew I had to keep going,” she said. “My family was always there, supporting me, and that gave me the push I needed to get through each day.”
During her illness, the Belmont community rallied around the Veo family, and a 2012 fundraiser called “No Texting Day” raised more than $10,000 for Boston Children’s Hospital, where Annie was treated.
Now, Annie is preparing to take on another challenge. This spring, she will run her first Boston Marathon to raise funds for children facing medical challenges.
“There were moments I wasn’t sure I would ever get here,” she said. “Now I can run, walk, and help others, and it feels incredible to come to this full-circle moment.”
It took years and countless hours of rehabilitation to get there. Ashlee Folkes, a physical therapist who supervised Annie during her clinical rotation, said she stood out early.
“We never had to teach Annie how to work with kids. It came to her naturally,” Folkes said. “She could meet the kids where they were.”
During her rotation, Annie worked with more than 100 patients, ranging from infants as young as 6 months old to young adults in their early 30s who were recovering from complex neurological and orthopedic procedures.
“When more challenging cases came up, she never backed down,” Folkes said. “From the moment I met her, I knew she was going to be a great physical therapist.”
This story was written by a journalism student in BU’s Newsroom program, a partnership between the university, The Belmont Voice and other news organizations in the Boston area.