Surrounded by women who seemed “about 12 feet tall,” the Maryland resident felt out of place.
“I was a duck among a flock of flamingos,” Graham tells SELF.
“My dad and I just looked at each other and laughed.”
Facebook/Victoria Graham, Miss Frostburg 2017
At that point, Graham had already undergone several surgeries to treat Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS).
The rare connective tissue disorder impacts about 200,000 Americans each year.
As Graham stood at orientation among her Miss Baltimore competitors, she initially felt terrified.
But as they started asking her questions, she realized she could be honest.
“When you’re in a neck brace, you’re able to’t hide,” she says.
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From then on, Graham kept competingall the while raising awareness aboutinvisible illnessesand the people they impact.
A gymnastics coach even told her she was too flexible.
But when she lay down for X-rays and MRIs, everything fell back into place.
“With EDS, everything is hyper-mobile,” she says.
“You’re not able to see some of the issues that are there when you’re upright.”
But each person with EDS experiences it differently,Calvin J.
“And everyone has some flexibility that’s abnormal,” Graham says.
“We don’t treat the conditionwe treat the people,” he says.
And Brown says it’s not surprising that it took so long for Graham to get a diagnosis.
This is why so many EDS patients call themselves “zebras.”
But that sound could have just as easily come from a zebra.
(Graham even started her own EDS nonprofit and named itThe Zebra web connection.)
So the 22-year-old keeps a busy schedule.
On an average day, Graham sets her alarm two hours before she needs to get up.
“My purse is always very heavy,” she jokes.
“I have 31 pills that I have to take every two hours.
I have an injection I need to give myself.
And I wear a heart rate monitor.”
After her first pageant, Graham competed in Miss Baltimore in January 2016.
After the event, a pageant coach offered his services for free.
She was crowned Miss White Oak and moved up to compete in Miss Maryland in June.
On top of that, Graham runs the Zebra internet.
Graham is no stranger to discrimination.
One man even called the police because he didnt think she should use the handicap spot.
It kind of hits you in the gut, she says.
Though trying, these experiences motivate Graham to keep working.
“I don’t want the next generation of people to have to go through what I did.”
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