![\"Hannah](\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2025\/11\/IMG_7147-900x600.jpg\")
Graduating in the spring of 2021 Reyling looked to stay close to home, enrolling at Texas Woman\u2019s University in Denton. However, Tarleton State University had always been on her radar since her older sister attended and earned her nursing degree in 2022. Reyling had always loved the energy of the campus, and her parents knew it well before she brought up the idea of heading there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a year at Texas Woman\u2019s, she knew it was time to make a move. She reconnected with a former co-worker and the pair decided to room together, a decision that would prove lifesaving some months down the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fall of 2022 brought a new start for Reyling in a new place where she was excited to expand her horizons and finally feel she had found what she so longed for. She missed getting to attend with her sister by mere months, but Reyling looked forward to carving her own path as a Tarleton State Texan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward to the second half of 2023, when she made the decision to do something she never planned to before moving to Stephenville \u2014 join a sorority. She joined Phi Mu and began making some of her lifelong best friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following that night of kickball in late February, Reyling let her parents know that she was not feeling well. She called her co-worker at Sky High Volleyball and then went to bed thinking she might be coming down with strep again, a yearly occurrence for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next morning, things felt more dire than a suspected case of strep. She mustered up just enough energy to call in to work, and her parents grew worried when she wasn\u2019t responding to their texts. That\u2019s when they called her roommate, Audrey Kubis, and asked her to check on Hannah. When she entered her room, everything appeared normal except for the purple dots that had appeared on her face. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reyling recalls Kubis asking her, \u201cDid you mark on your face with purple marker?\u201d To which she replied, \u201cThat’s a stupid question \u2014 no!\u201d Audrey then took a picture and sent it to Hannah’s mom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy mom\u2019s a nurse, and she\u2019d never seen anything like that before,\u201d continued Reyling. \u201cShe said, \u2018That’s not chicken pox or anything like that \u2014 you need to take her to the ER.\u2019\u201d Reyling argued that she probably just had strep, but Kubis insisted they go to the emergency room immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By this time, she was unable to walk under her own power and Kubis had to help her to the car to make their way to the emergency room. Upon arrival the staff quickly realized the severity of Reyling\u2019s condition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe front desk receptionist sees Audrey trying to carry me in and she brings a wheelchair out for me,\u201d said Hannah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was taken back to be evaluated while Kubis filled out paperwork with the help of Reyling\u2019s mom on the phone. She recalls being thirsty and not being allowed water in case she needed emergency surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was just so out of it. I now know that\u2019s because meningitis affects your brain and your spinal cord, and that\u2019s why I couldn\u2019t walk. It got to a point where they weren\u2019t going to give me water, so I went to sleep. I woke up 12 days later at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doctors discovered that Reyling was suffering from bacterial meningococcal meningitis, a disease that can cause serious complications or even death and can leave victims with life-altering physical changes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hannah developed sepsis, and the decision was made to amputate both legs, her left hand and most of the fingers on her right hand. She was able to keep her right thumb, which she is grateful for since she is right-handed and having a thumb allows her to have more independence and to do the little things like scrolling social media and sending texts to friends and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t remember much from the first month and a half I was in the hospital,\u201d she said. \u201cI do remember some points like the day I had my amputations. I didn’t really know what was going on, but I knew I was having surgery. If I didn’t have my amputations, I would have died, so I am grateful that my parents made that hard decision for me because that\u2019s hard, seeing your young child going through everything.\u201d Weeks of rehab followed for the then first-semester junior on her path to recovery and a new normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thankful to be alive and with her closest family and friends around her praying, Reyling was able to return on June 19, 2024, to her close-knit community in Saint Jo. \u201cSince my community is so small, they had the volunteer fire department lead me to town. There were so many people in the square welcoming me home. It was a really important day for my family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Returning to Stephenville was the objective for Reyling following her unexpected detour in the spring of 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI always wanted to make it my goal to go back to college,\u201d said Reyling. \u201cIn my case, it\u2019s very different because I know when people drop out, they typically don\u2019t go back. My situation was different because an unexpected health issue caused me to step away. I knew I needed to return for myself \u2014 not just for my education, but for my mental health as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhenever I moved back to Stephenville, it really pushed me physically because you always want to keep up with your friends. It pushed me in a very positive way, just by increasing my stamina.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not letting anything separate them for long, Reyling and Kubis moved back in together in late spring 2025, and Reyling was back in the classroom just a few months later, on her way to a bachelor’s degree in nutrition science with a concentration in dietetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cComing back to Stephenville and Tarleton wasn\u2019t just about finishing my degree, it was about coming home to people who see me the same way they always have,\u201d she said. \u201cMy friends, my roommate (and) my professors, they all treat me like Hannah, not what I\u2019ve been through. That\u2019s what gave me the courage to come back and keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" STEPHENVILLE, Texas \u2014 Life is full of unexpected twist and turns, with some being bigger challenges than others. Hannah Reyling experienced this firsthand on February 29, 2024. Two days earlier, bouncing back from a bout …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":964,"featured_media":54664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","wds_primary_category":382,"footnotes":""},"categories":[382,421],"tags":[456,468],"class_list":["post-54655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homepage","category-featuredstories","tag-stephenville","tag-texan-made"],"acf":{"image":false},"author_meta":{"display_name":"trhodes","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/author\/trhodes\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2025\/11\/Hannah-Reyling-Website-300x200.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["_Homepage<\/a>","Featured Stories<\/a>"],"unlinked":["_Homepage<\/span>","Featured Stories<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["Stephenville<\/a>","Texan Made<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Stephenville<\/span>","Texan Made<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 5 months ago","modified":"Updated 5 months ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on November 20, 2025","modified":"Updated on November 25, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on November 20, 2025 4:28 pm","modified":"Updated on November 25, 2025 8:30 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/964"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54655"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54690,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54655\/revisions\/54690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Hannah](\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2025\/11\/IMG_7265-900x600.jpg\")