What is Mitochondrial Disease?

Kerissa • Sep 17, 2013

In honor of this special week across the globe, I’m going to try blogging every day through Friday.  Today I want to share some basic facts about mitochondrial disease!

Here are just some of the many symptoms:


1. More kids die from mitochondrial disease than from pediatric cancer. Shocking but true! Now that my eyes and ears are opened, I hear so many news stories and articles of kids and adults fighting this terrible disorder.

2. There are 44 different variations of mitochondrial disease. This makes diagnosing difficult and challenging. To make matters worse, there are so few mitochondrial specialists in the nation. Patients often go undiagnosed for years.

3. Every 15 minutes a child is born they will develop some type of Mito Disease by the age 10.

4. The following are some of the symptoms that I experience: fatigue, migraines, nystagmus, drooping eyelids, tremors, dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, chronic nerve pain, G.I. issues, problems with sleep, muscle weakness and atrophy, exercise intolerance, tinnitus, hypermobility, nausea, etc.

Tomorrow I will be blogging about how I first got started on this mito journey! Many of you probably don’t know what happened to me around this time one year ago…


By Kerissa Lee 23 Jan, 2024
Hi, friends, I had a whole other post ready to go with some good news, but instead, I have an urgent prayer request. I started experiencing sudden onset numbness, tingling, and weakness in my whole left leg, and it’s been so scary. 🥺 It just came on out of the blue. I was doing so well with physical therapy each week (able to walk fast on the treadmill and leg press 40 lbs), and now, I have to limp because my left leg is soo weak. I really want to avoid the ED as much as possible, so I saw one of my doctors today. She’s concerned I’m having a big motor nerve issue. 😭 The plan is to see a physical medicine specialist, have a nerve conduction study, get an urgent MRI done, as well as see my PCP and pain doctor on the 25th and 29th for further evaluation/testing. I know I already said this, but it really has been so scary to lose function so quickly. Can you pray that I will trust the Lord and not worry? It’s been very hard, so I’d really appreciate your prayers and support in the coming weeks. Thank you so much. ❤️
By Kerissa Lee 01 Jan, 2024
"Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth." Hosea 6:3
By Kerissa Lee 11 Dec, 2023
"This hard place in which you, perhaps, find yourself, is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him."  Elisabeth Elliot
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