It was the first full week of class, and just like Freshman year, I had gotten sick. My body ached. My head pounded. I felt exhausted.

When you have PANS, getting sick is often far worse than just feeling tired and congested—in the past, a simple virus could send me into a full-blown flare of severe OCD, panic attacks, involuntary movements, and even hallucinations. So naturally, when my nose started running last week, all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to flare. I couldn’t have cared less about the cold symptoms themselves.

And so for the next few days, as I gorged myself on oranges and took copious amounts of Vitamin C and tried to rest as much as possible, I braced myself for the coming disaster. I thought about how it used to feel when I flared—that sensation that someone was taking my mind out of my head. I remembered those times when I felt like a monster was swallowing me up, and I dreaded this impending doom.

Last week, I waited for the flare to come… And waited… But it never really came.

True, I did have a slight increase in symptoms: some barely noticeable tics, a little bit of memory problems, and some OCD. The worst was one night when I was afraid that everything in my apartment was contaminated with MRSA, but I was able to mostly ignore it, go to bed, and wake up the next day with the obsession gone. So I wouldn’t consider the symptom increase a flare, because it was mild and didn’t last long, and I never felt like I was completely losing myself.

In a strange way, it was a privilege to just get sick and feel bad for a few days. This time, I didn’t have to do a Prednisone burst and have my mom stay with me while I was almost out-of-my-mind—I just needed to rest to get over the cold like anyone would have to.

You see, I haven’t gotten sick without flaring in at least two years. During Freshman year, that seemingly harmless sore throat set my whole life on fire, triggered sleep issues that led to a misdiagnosis of narcolepsy, and marked the beginning of a year-long decline. But this time, so far, whatever I caught has had no serious consequences.

For months, I’ve been saying that I’d know I was better when I could get sick without flaring, and now, it’s happened. I’m not glad to have been under the weather this week, but I’m glad that getting sick confirmed I’m no longer sick with PANS as I once was. Although in certain areas of my life I still struggle, I’d like to think that now, I’ve not just recovered from this virus—I’ve recovered from the worst of PANS.