Summer Dashe

It was sooooo special to have some of the ole WPDE ABC15 news team back together in South Carolina for Alena Lee and Meteorologist Gerard Jebaily’s wedding!

Cindy and I had an absolute blast catching up with former ABC-15 coworkers at Gerard Jebaily and Alena Lee’s gorgeous wedding in Murrells Inlet! They may be the most beautiful couple ever, but the fact is, Gerard has officially joined the “I married up” club. Welcome, buddy! You looked stunning Alena!

I’m sure you recognize these faces. Gerard and Alena were part of our weather team together from 2014–2016 and frankly were two of the best I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. Both have had stellar careers and are now on TV in Baltimore.

Also pictured are Summer Dashe (left) and Sydney Glenn (right), two outstanding anchors/reporters who were such an important part of our team. It was so cool to catch up, share stories, and see how well they’re both doing outside of the wild and crazy TV business!

Congrats, Gerard and Alena! Here’s to decades of marital bliss.
❤️❤️❤️

I left my dream career because of these symptoms.

She helped me reroute the dream.

Sending strength to Fidji Simo.

May the work being done at ChronicleBio sustain your hope until better days emerge.

Thank you to all the patients in this space who give so much to research in the pursuit of positive outcomes.

We exist to change outcomes like this.

ChronicleBio Co-founder Fidji Simo recently announced she is taking medical leave from OpenAI due to Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS).

It is a jarring reminder of why our entire team is working fast and hard. Simo is one of millions of people facing life-altering symptoms and difficult decisions because of them.

Conditions like POTS, ME/CFS, and Long COVID, which frequently overlap, remain poorly understood, leaving patients without FDA-approved treatments. At ChronicleBio, we are building a multimodal data platform designed to unlock answers by combining biospecimens, wearable data, and clinical records to generate AI-driven insights into disease biology.

The research is complex, but our goal remains simple. We aim to move from fragmented understanding to actionable insight to targeted therapies so patients like Fidji can get better, sooner.

In just our first year, hundreds of participants have enrolled in the Chronicle I Study through our clinic partners around the world. Our scientists are already generating early signals across complex chronic conditions and have identified multiple potential drug targets.

So, to our courageous co-founder, and all patients who have lost pieces of their identities to chronic illness:

We know why we are here.
We know what is at stake.
We are determined.

With love from the lab,
The ChronicleBio Team

This time last week I had hope. The family group text was abuzz. I told a friend it felt a little like Christmas Eve. I was anxious, but excited that the next day I might be getting the gift of a diagnosis and clear treatment.

That didn’t happen. And that’s really hard.

Tonight I’m on hour two of what has become my dreaded nightly routine: Lie down, sit up, lie down, stand up, lie down, walk around, lie down. This “recalibrating” goes on for hours until I’ve somewhat regulated the pressure in my head enough to tolerate lying down and fall asleep.

For months, I’ve been clinging to the hope that there’s an end in sight. Tests were finally starting to show things that would make sense of all of this and as I waited for the big NY trip to confirm it, it was as if I was getting through a chronic pain marathon.

“The finish line is closer now. You’re going to make it,” I’d tell myself. “Just a little longer and you’ll have relief.”

As my husband watched me squirm in my chair during the day trying to settle back pain and writhe in my bed at night trying to regulate the pressure in my head, he’d say the same thing. We are so close. When the surgeon told me he’d found nothing after my procedure last week, I asked everyone not to tell Jon yet.

My hope was shattered. I wanted him to get to live in a world with it just a little longer.

Tonight I’m back in the marathon. The never-ending chronic pain marathon. I thought I could see the finish line, but it seems I’ve taken another confusing wrong turn. Although, perhaps this detour did provide some useful directions.

I can’t believe I’m back to this again.

Stamina. Anyone surviving chronic pain has stamina. I have that.

I’m home from NY and back with the puppies.

What a week.

Thank you all for your kindness and support these last few days. I’m exhausted and my brain is so foggy. I’ll share more about the procedure, my follow-up with the surgeon, and next steps soon.

Meantime, Sundae and Bowen seem to be applying pressure to the femoral puncture sites. I think they’re trying to help. 😉

And they are. Most definitely.