Emma Mendelssohn was just 15 when she noticed something strange: her skin had turned yellow.
It was May 2018, and the high schooler from the Bay Area emailed her doctor. The jaundice faded quickly, so she brushed it off, along with her lingering fatigue.
“I thought I just had a bad stomach bug or maybe the flu. I didn’t think I was dying,” she told PEOPLE. But months later, the jaundice returned and stayed.
After bloodwork, doctors saw one red flag: her liver enzymes. On Halloween, she was told to go to the ER immediately. “They were like, ‘You are all sorts of messed up. You’ve got to come back in.’ ”
At UCSF Medical Center, she was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis (a rare disease where the immune system attacks the liver) and Hashimoto’s disease. Her liver was failing. Steroids didn’t work. She needed a transplant.
“Ultimately, it was my decision,” she says. “They told me, ‘You have a week to live, or we can put you on the transplant list.’ So I was like, ‘Yeah, those odds are pretty self-explanatory. Put me on the list.’ ”
She received a new liver three days later. Recovery was brutal: “I felt sick, and I was like, ‘Okay, this seems a little traumatic. I fear. I think this is a bit much.’ And they were like, ‘No, girl, you’re cooked.’ ”
While in the hospital, someone from Make-A-Wish visited. At first, she told them to give the wish to someone else. “That made me realize, ‘Oh, I am sick… This is going to be something that’s prevalent in my life forever now.’ ”
She eventually regained her strength and went off to college. But during junior year, symptoms returned. This time, it was donor-mediated rejection, a rare clash between her immune system and her donor’s.
“There was no treatment protocol,” she says. “No one said, ‘Here’s the plan.’ I just sat at home waiting.” She began an eight-week immunotherapy regimen: “I’d feel like absolute dog crap for two days, then do it all again.”
Still, she stayed grounded, thanks in part to TikTok. “I’m not trying to be inspirational,” she says. “I just want people to know the truth: this stuff is hard. And sometimes, it’s ugly.”
A second transplant followed. She didn’t want one. But, she says: “I feel like I should at least give it a little bit of a go.”
Now recovering, Mendelssohn is back in the Bay Area and planning to finish college. “I’m really just a normal gal,” she says. “These are just the cards I was dealt. So you figure out how to play your hand.”