Emily Ruble felt sick since February, but until a couple of months ago she didn’t know why.

“In February my hearing started to go and I kind of was going back and forth to AMC,” Ruble said. “By the end of June, July I was just in so much pain all the time.”

What she thought was an ear infection turned out to be so much more. The 22-year-old suffers from Wegener’s Granulomatosis, an autoimmune disease that inflames and affects body tissues. In Ruble’s case, she lost feeling and was paralyzed on the left side of her face at one point.

Luckily, Ruble’s been receiving treatment for several weeks now, and although Wegener’s has no cure, she could go into remission for a very long time.

“Her doctor sounds pretty optimistic,” Tammy Edwards, Ruble’s mother said. “All in all, she’s actually feeling pretty good.”

Ruble has been through quite an ordeal. She felt sick off and on during the spring, while her ear constantly bothered her. She started work at the Gerard Academy in April, but ended up taking sick leave at the end of July because she had felt progressively worse.

She went to Austin Medical Center several times to treat her ear infection, but doctors there couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. Eventually, she felt so ill she had to be taken to the Emergency Room at St. Mary’s Hospital in August for mastoidectomy surgery on her ear, which involves drilling a hole behind her ear to get at the infected area.

Ruble felt a little better for a day or so, before she got worse. After several tests at Mayo Clinic, doctors figured out what was wrong with her: She had a type of vasculitis called Wegener’s Granulomatosis. Vasculitis is a family of diseases that inflame and swell blood vessels, arteries and other parts of the body.

Ruble got worse before she got better. At one point, the left side of Ruble’s face was paralyzed, and she had trouble swallowing after she lost feeling in her tongue and her throat. She couldn’t eat for a little while after that, getting sick as well as dealing with the pain from her ear.

It took a bit of wrangling with the insurance companies, but Ruble started on a prescription of high-dose steroids to combat the illness, along with several weeks worth of a low-grade chemotherapy treatment, mostly used for rheumatoid arthritis and non-hodgkins lymphoma.

Edwards says it’s lucky that Ruble got the treatment she did. If left unchecked, the disease could have proven fatal. Thankfully, with today’s medicine most people who contract Wegener’s go into remission after treatment.

“We wouldn’t have had Emily in a couple years had we not gotten the treatment we needed,” Edwards said.

The chemo treatment wasn’t without its concerns, however. The typical person affected with Wegener’s is in their 40s or 50s. Ruble, at 22-years-old, could have faced severe side effects from chemotherapy including becoming sterile. As a precaution, Ruble’s eggs were harvested before treatment began, after which she was very sick for about a week.

Thankfully, the treatments seem to be working. Ruble is back at work at Gerard and just completed the last round of her chemotherapy Thursday. Although she’s lost hearing in her left ear, doctors are confident they can fix that through surgery. She’ll continue taking steroids, lowering the doses as time progresses until doctors pronounce her in remission.

In total, Edwards estimates Ruble’s hospital bills to be around $125,000, of which insurance is expected to cover a majority of the costs.

There will be a benefit for Ruble at the VFW club on Oct. 23 from 3-10 p.m., with food from Piggy Blues BBQ, a silent auction, a bake sale and a dance with live music by the Cully Drew Band from 8 to 10 p.m. All proceeds will go towards Ruble’s bills. The benefit is organized by Jan Roberts-Valek, a long-time family friend of Edwards and Ruble.

“When Tammy talked about it, I just felt it was something we needed to do,” Roberts-Valek said. “They just need a little extra boost to get that done.”

As for Ruble, she’s looking forward to a nice recovery and is thankful for the many people and groups in the community that have helped her along the way.

“It’s nice,” Ruble said. “I don’t think I’d be able to go through what I’m going through without the huge support system I have.”