Alexis Donn is channeling her harrowing health journey into her powerful new song, “Sick of Me,” premiering exclusively with American Songwriter.
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Donn has always been an active person, so much so that she attended the University of Notre Dame on a track scholarship. But her life came to a screeching halt during her sophomore year when she started experiencing inexplicable symptoms.
“I just went completely numb emotionally,” Donn tells American Songwriter. One morning she woke up overwhelmingly exhausted to the point where she could barely move her limbs and her stomach had swelled to the point where it looked like she was nine months pregnant, prompting her to call 911.
“I feel like I’m a phone running on one percent,” she recalls how she felt at that moment. “I was like, ‘I must be dying. There’s no other explanation.’”
Donn landed in the hospital with an unknown virus, unable to keep food or water in her system. For the next several months, Donn was in and out of the student health center, desperately trying to get a diagnosis, until one day, she took a stand.
“They’re like, ‘You look fine, all your tests are fine.’ They think it’s mental and they’re like, ‘You need to leave,’” Donn says. “I said, ‘I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong.’”
That’s when the doctor suggested that she might have an autoimmune disease known as POTS. The doctor ran a test where he monitored her blood pressure and heart rate while sitting and standing. When her blood pressure dropped and her heart rate skyrocketed, it confirmed that she had POTS. “That news was as good as the fact as we knew what it was, but we didn’t know why it was or how to treat it,” she explains.
Donn’s diet was “completely overhauled,” removing anything artificial. She was in and out of a wheelchair and went through phases where she couldn’t be on the track team. She eventually went into remission and was able to fully rejoin the track team her senior year. But life took another turn when at the end of 2020. Donn contracted a severe case of COVID-19 that left her breathless and bedridden for four days. In mid-2021, she got a milder case of COVID-19 around the time she moved into a new house. Donn noticed that after moving in, she started developing headaches and sinus issues, along with worsening fatigue, all of which were triggering the POTS.
One morning, she woke up unable to breathe, as if having a 20-pound weight on her chest, believing it was once again COVID. As the months went by, her symptoms got worse to the point where it felt like there was a rope running from the top of her throat to the bottom of her abdomen, all of this leaving her mentally and physically drained. Over the course of eight months, she saw 11 specialists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “I spent all the money that I had saved on an album on medical bills I wasn’t expecting, and I have no answers,” Donn asserts.
That’s when she turned to a functional medicine doctor in Nashville, who performed an Autonomic Response Test that revealed that Donn had been exposed to toxic black mold, is a long COVID-19 case with the virus still lingering in her gut and lungs, had three parasites and the virus HHV-6 in her vagus nerve that is likely what caused her POTS.
“In that 15-minute appointment, my whole life is explained to me,” Donn expresses. From there, she started a series of detox treatments such as saunas, ion foot baths, ozone treatments and more that have helped heal her body. Donn predicts that she’s now 95 percent back to full health.
“It is really unfair that the burden of the sick person falls to the sick person–that our health care system is not set up in place to truly support people to heal from chronic illnesses,” Donn professes. “The mental strain that it’s taken on me, on everyone around me, it’s been profound.”
Donn turned her pain into healing through “Sick of Me,” which is featured on her upcoming EP, The Year I Died. Donn was writing the project while sick but was on the road to recovery. “I purposely wanted to capture last year,” she affirms. “I kept telling myself, ‘I don’t know what this is for or what this is going to be about, but I’m going to share this.’”
The last song written for the EP was “Sick of Me,” an acoustic pop number accented by Donn’s dreamy vocals. It was an out-of-body experience for the singer, who wrote the song as a truce to her sickened body, expressed through such lyrics as Dying to know the old me / Scared of my own body / A stranger’s living in these genes / But they say it’s me / I’m so sick of me.
“I want to address my body as a separate entity in this song because when I got sick, I started seeing my body as the enemy and I wanted to write a letter to it saying I missed how we used to be,” Donn shares. “I wanted it to be this nostalgic love song to my body saying, ‘I want to start to repair the relationship, will you take me back? You’re the only home I’ve ever had.’”
She didn’t just write the song for herself, but for the many other people in the world who are sick. After a seven-month hiatus, Donn took to social media to give a health update and mentioned that she was recording a song and was looking for people who either they or loved ones have autoimmune issues, to feature on the song. Several people jumped at the opportunity: “Sick of Me” co-writer Hannah Avison and producer Femke Weidema, journalist and the University of Tennessee Professor Summer Dashe, artists Voray, She Is Jules, Lakelin Lemmings and Hillary Murphy, and couple Chris and Michelle Arnold. Collectively, they represent illnesses POTS, MS, Crohn’s Disease, Klinefelter syndrome and more. Their voices join beautifully in unison at the end of the song, driving home the final line, I’m so sick of me.
“Having the choir at the end absolutely means everything to me,” Donn professes. “Having that energy on the song is really critical. It completely elevates the relatability of the song because the whole point of having the choir at the end is having a bunch of people who haven’t been seen and heard have a moment to say, ‘Please see me, please see us. Please hear us.’ It’s really a cry for, ‘Please see the number of people struggling with chronic illness in the country and world, and can we actually please do something about it for the first time.’”
As Donn continues on her journey of healing, “Sick of Me” serves as a heartfelt summary of all that she’s had to overcome, the singer hoping that it will inspire others to do the same.
“‘Sick of Me’ and the rest of The Year I Died EP sounds exactly like last year felt,” Donn proclaims. “I’m really proud of it. I hope it heals somebody.”
“Sick of Me” will be officially released on Friday (April 7), coinciding with World Health Day.
Photo Credit: Matt Blum/Courtesy of ThreeBrand Media
