Summer Dashe

There is no miracle cure behind these pictures.

Every time I post a few “good moments” I am asked what I did to get better. No gatekeeping here. If I had a treatment to share with you, goodness knows I’d scream it on every channel.

I’m not better. I’m worse than ever. Nothing is working and I still don’t know what I’m doing about the whole vascular compression debacle. But I’m really good at managing my condition in a way that allows me to enjoy life sometimes.

So what’s my secret?

I took sleeping pills the night before so I could get the best rest possible, if there is such a thing with these conditions. I took my electrolytes even though I’m unsure how much they really benefit me, but they certainly don’t hurt. I took my usual blood pressure pills, heart rate meds, and other drugs to manage the symptoms. I slept late. I got a pedicure with my family and didn’t feel well, so went back to bed when we got home. I ate some chicken nuggets, which are my safe food. I napped for a few hours then gave myself plenty of time to slowly get ready with rest breaks. Mostly, I got lucky that my body let me have fun. Many days I can do everything right and still be down hard.

I wish I had a cure to report, but it’s just my own concoction. The energy was brought to you by strict pacing. The life in my face was brought to you by IT Cosmetics makeup. The stamina was brought to you by a few cocktails. The smile was brought to you by extreme gratitude. The laughter was brought to you by my niece and nephew. The joy was brought to you by…me.

Because suffering and joy can always coexist. Someday it won’t be so hard for us to have moments like this. They won’t be so few and far between. Until then, yay for a good day…well, half a good day, anyway. Wishing each of you many more of those.

Found my husband roaming around Silicon Valley the other day. We hadn’t seen each other in six weeks!

I’ve been used to moving across the country because of my news career every few years, but this is certainly the strangest transitional period I’ve ever experienced.

We are opening ChronicleBio’s first headquarters in California, so work will again be taking me to a new home base once the cottage in Tennessee sells.

Meantime, Jon has been traveling for work and visiting his family in Dallas. He happened to be in Fremont for a work trip while I was in Menlo Park for my own. We met for dinner and will be spending 4th of July with family in the Bay Area.

I’ve always chased work I believe in and this is no different. It has been a whirlwind and I desperately hope to get settled in somewhere soon, but it is not lost on me how lucky I am to be able to keep moving.

I’m upright. Able to eat. And participating in life. For now. For who knows how long. But for now. Chaos and all, I’ll take it.

These are the people trying to cure us.

It is surreal to be sitting in a room watching scientists passionately debate pathways, biomarkers, immune signatures, and study design for illnesses that completely changed my own life.

For nearly 10 years, I’ve kept up with research as it was published, reading journals and waiting desperately to come across something that might help me. I wondered how the process worked and who the people making the discoveries were. They are, after all, holding my life in their hands.

I’m so proud to introduce you to some of them.

That’s Dr. John Mumm on the left. He joined us a few weeks ago as Chief Scientific Officer after a wildly successful career founding three companies leading to meaningful discoveries in cancer research.

Dr. Genelle Harrison is next up. She’s a bioinformatician who is helping dig into multiomic data to better understand different subtypes of diseases to identify targeted therapies.

I’m convinced Dr. Nagendra Athreya has magic powers because he’s an engineer currently making our dreams come true when it comes to our AI platform.

Dr. Jennifer Bone is a self described science nerd and machine learning pro channeling her skills into biomarker discovery.

Dr. Rhondene Wint is a bioinformatician helping to build the system to organize and analyze huge amounts of data so we can better understand diseases and develop treatments faster.

That’s me! How did I get there? 😉 Former news anchor turned science communicator.

Rohit Gupta is on my right. He’s one of our cofounders and the CEO of ChronicleBio. He has built biobanks at Stanford and UCSF and is driven by his mission to find treatments for his wife and daughter and all who suffer from complex conditions.

Dr. Yambazi Banda is the one with that absolutely wonderful smile. He’s our Head of Platform with an impressive background in genomics who has grown this team and executed the vision.

Not pictured is Cortney Gensemer, PhD who many of you know from her groundbreaking work in the EDS space. She was sick and in addition to her symptoms is now experiencing severe FOMO from having to skip the trip.

My conditions landed me in a room with these insanely smart, driven, caring people. But it is the profound helplessness I felt hearing from thousands of patients after I did a special report about POTS on the news that led me here. The anger that there isn’t more support for us, the grief over futures we lost to our symptoms, and the disbelief that there still aren’t FDA approved treatments available are what keep me showing up even on my worst days.

The hope this team gives me often stands me up too.

Before I worked in this space, I used to wonder if researchers knew how many of us were waiting. Did they understand what we’d lost and what was on the line with their work? I wished I could remind them at every road block that they couldn’t give up because we weren’t. I hoped they appreciated that a career win to them could be life changing for us. Are they fighting as hard for my life as I am?

Our company is just a year old. There’s still so much work ahead. But I wanted you to see this moment too because there are real people behind the science who care deeply and are working incredibly hard to find our cures. And I’ve wondered who they are for almost a decade.

This is them. And they’re better than I ever could’ve imagined.

Forever one of my favorite career moments was when Cortney Gensemer, PhD said yes to a job at ChronicleBio!

I know how daunting major career pivots can be and I’m so proud of Cortney for sharing how she made the decision to leave academia and join a startup.

Chronic illness forces us to make unimaginable life choices. We find ourselves reevaluating our dreams and, sometimes, even grieving the loss of them altogether. It is a gift to work alongside people who get that and are trying like heck to change the future for us.

Am I still working on EDS? Yes. More than ever. A lot of you have asked. So, I wrote about leaving academia and what “being a scientist” can look like, what a PhD really gives you, and how I found my way to ChronicleBio.

Becoming a mom forced me to reevaluate the way I was doing research. That pivot allowed me to uncover a system I didn’t even know existed outside of the walls of academia. Spending 60+ hours a week in a lab took a toll on my health, but the intensity that academia rewards is the same intensity that undoes the careful work I’ve put in to keep myself functional. I spent a long time thinking that staying in academia was the price of doing this work seriously. It wasn’t.

What I’ve discovered since leaving is that some of the most brilliant, patient-relevant work in the chronic illness space is happening outside of academic institutions. In my latest blog, I share how I made the decision to leave and what life as a scientist looks like now.

https://open.substack.com/pub/cortneygensemer/p/leaving-academia-not-leaving-the?r=1yhgid&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Temporary coanchors. Forever friends.

It was a privilege being your Matron of Honor. There will never be enough opportunities to return the favor for the support you’ve shown me all these years. Thank you for giving me a chance to be there for you on your wedding day.

You were the most beautiful bride, Alena Lee!

The Officiant & The Matron of Honor: A husband and wife duo facilitating magical matrimony!

I think that’s a wrap! Jon has officiated three weddings for our friends. I’ve been in the bridal party for six. Everyone is now married!

I’ve gotten to walk down the aisle toward my husband more times than most because of his officiating skills. What a gift. It is bittersweet to think this might have been the last one.

Without bachelorette parties and weddings to force us all together, I’m already talking about making vow renewals a thing in our group just to give us the next excuse.

How very lucky we are to hold such close bonds with wonderful people. Congratulations to the newlyweds, Alena Lee and Meteorologist Gerard Jebaily!

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.
❤️❤️❤️

Maid of Honor duties start…now!

I intercepted your family at DFW, Alena Lee! We’ve got a flight full of VIP wedding party members heading your way. The bride’s side is now boarding!

See you soon, Myrtle Beach!

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

I would crawl across this country even if it killed me to celebrate you, Alena Lee! Can’t wait to get her married in just a few weeks back in South Carolina where it all began. 🤍