Take Heart

Harnessing strength, hope and faith, best friends Andie Giles and Ashley Thomas continue to battle through their heart conditions each day, refusing to give up the fight.

By Trinity King

Web Exclusive

Spend more than five minutes with Andie Giles or Ashley Thomas and you would never guess the majority of their days are spent convincing themselves to get out of bed, searching for energy when it feels as though there’s none left to find. Giles, a freshman at Westlake High School, and Thomas, a recent University of Texas graduate, have both spent the better portion of the last year battling different forms of heart disease.

Giles and Thomas first met in the spring of 2014, when Giles was a 7th grader at a local middle school. Thomas had just been placed as a WyldLife Christian group leader at Giles’ school, and Giles was one of the first girls she met. From the get-go, they had a connection. Now, two years later, they’re closer than ever.

“We’re sisters,” Giles says of Thomas. “We spend entirely too much time together.”

Thomas first experienced symptoms of unrelenting chest pain in August 2015. A health checkup at University Health Services, the on-campus doctor’s offices for UT students and faculty, sparked a search for answers. After countless return trips to UHS—and many wrong diagnoses—Thomas decided to consult a cardiologist about her returning condition. One cardiologist soon turned into three.

It’s now been about a month since she was advised to wear a heart monitor, or “William,” as Giles affectionately calls it, and Thomas is still unsure of what she’s up against.

“It’s scary to still not know,” Thomas says, “but I’m going to keep fighting.”

For Giles, the story is eerily similar. She first noticed her symptoms of heart pain and shortness of breath in May 2015. One day, she started to turn blue while she ran. A self-proclaimed “un-athletic athlete,” Giles initially thought her symptoms meant it was time to transition from running to walking. She made a visit to her doctor and was diagnosed with asthma, given an inhaler to use for the summer and sent on her way. She spent the rest of the summer sick and battling bouts of exhaustion. On a return visit to her doctor in October 2015, she was diagnosed with something new: costochondritis, a disease that causes the muscle tissue between a patient’s rib bones to inflame.

Multiple chiropractor appointments and a prescribed heart monitor later, Giles was still battling her original symptoms of dizziness, shortness of breath, exhaustion and turning blue in the face. Two months passed and she received a new diagnosis: POTS, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a chronic and incurable condition. In short, it means Giles has 1/20 the amount of blood volume of a regular person.

As each woman lists her many symptoms, shockingly, neither succumbs to a negative attitude. There is no complaining or groaning about their problems.

“You can either have a really crappy outlook and be sad that [this is] happening to you, or you can have strength and be like, ‘OK, this is what’s going on right now, but I’m going to keep living my life.’ I’m not going to let this hold me back from doing the things I want to do,” Thomas says.

Both steadfast in their faith, Giles and Thomas believe God is using this time to redirect their attention back to him, to remind them he is the only one upon whom they can rely.

Looking back, Giles notes how much her friendship with Thomas has grown through the ups and downs of battling their respective heart conditions together. They each know exactly what the other is going through and find comfort in the knowledge that they can complain to each other without feeling like they’re moping or whining.

If either wakes up feeling particularly awful, she remembers the other and the resilience she sees. Thomas confesses that positivity doesn’t come easily to her, but says watching Giles fight with a smile on her face gives her the strength to smile through the pain herself.

These two young women are doing the unexpected: They’re embracing their illnesses. They know its all a part of a bigger picture, a bigger plan. It’s all part of an inspirational story they hope to share with others.

Just like the tightknit friendship they’ve established, Giles and Thomas know that no matter what obstacles they’re up against, it will all be worth the fight.

Photos courtesy of Andie & Ashley.