A young Regina woman is taking a unique approach to raising awareness about a disease that changed her life.

Meghan Pederson designed a t-shirt to represent her puzzling struggling with auto immune disease.

“Basically I woke up one day and was in so much pain I couldn’t even get out of bed,” she described. “It’s just so important that people be aware of this because to so many people I probably look like just a healthy young woman and it’s something I struggle with day to day.”

Now her design – a puzzle with a piece missing showing a faceless woman is entered in a contest for her favourite t-shirt company - Threadless. The contest is to design a t-shirt that represents something about the designer. The winner will receive $2,500.

When Pederson found out about it she saw it as a good creative outlet and a chance to bring attention to the disease.

“My hope is that with more awareness and more medical breakthroughs that one day there can be a cure for this,” Pederson said.

There are over 80 different known types of auto immune disorders and they are usually difficult to diagnose and chronic. The symptoms often start with muscle aches and low fevers but they can get progressively worse with flare ups. The body's immune system that is meant to protect you from disease and infection but with this type of disease, the immunes system starts attacking healthy body cells by mistake.

For Pederson, the question of what she has still doesn’t have an answer but it has been clear for a while that it is a problem with auto-immunity.

This mystery illness is why Pederson’s design is a puzzle with a few missing pieces.

“There is always a missing piece to that puzzle, it is so hard to get that diagnosis,” she explained.

People can rate the t-shirt designs online at www.threadless.com. If Pederson wins the prize she plans on donating the money to research programs for auto-immune disease.

Edited by News Talk Radio’s Adriana Christianson