A Weslaco man is raising awareness after losing his wife to a rare brain disease.

Steve Ortiz is keeping the memory of his late wife, Liliana Zapata, alive by sharing her story to encourage others to keep fighting.

"For some reason it could've picked me, it could've picked you, it could've picked anybody. Unfortunately, it picked her," Ortiz said.

It started with occasional fainting.

"Very first symptoms were lightheadedness," Ortiz said. "And that was at first dismissed as something, oh, stress related."

And then symptoms became more serious.

"She started sweating less and less, which was kind of unusual," Ortiz said.

In 2019, Zapata was about to turn 50. She was doing what she loved, teaching middle school art in Weslaco.

At first, doctors dismissed her symptoms as stress from work.

"Maybe it is stress, you're a teacher, you've got all of these deadlines," Ortiz said.

But Ortiz says she didn't take that as an answer.

"She insisted that something was going on," Ortiz said.

Zapata went to her primary care doctor.

"She started getting tingling on the left side of her body," Ortiz said.

A hormone doctor and a cardiologist.

"She would go to the doctors, the doctor would tell her well, everything checks out, they would do tests, electrodes and stuff like that, they would do to her. And it would all come out normal, but she was just insisting that something is not right," Ortiz said.

Ortiz says his late wife was persistent. It was one of the reasons he married her more than 20 years ago.

They knew each other for 30 years. They met at the University of Texas Pan-American. They were college sweethearts.

Her symptoms became worse and worse and doctors weren't providing answers, but Ortiz said that persistence stopped her from giving up.

"But she just wouldn't, she knew something was going on," Ortiz said.

In October 2023, Zapata was hospitalized.

"We had a hard time waking her up, she was just knocked out, so that was very unusual," Ortiz said.

Doctors found she had low sodium. Her vocal cords became paralyzed, and a tube was inserted into her throat. Her oxygen levels were also dropping.

"But even then, they couldn't tell us why, why it was happening," Ortiz said.

Ortiz kept her spirits up.

"Try to have that attitude with her because she was a very joyful person. She was always laughing, smiling, so it was difficult to see her in that condition," Ortiz said.

Zapata's persistence led them to a neurologist at Houston Methodist Hospital in 2024.

"Finally, based on all her symptoms, he told her, unfortunately your diagnosis is Multiple System Atrophy," Ortiz said.

Multiple System Atrophy is a rare neurological condition.

According to the National Institute of Health, there is no cure. Similar to Parkinson's, it impacts the central nervous system, which controls blood pressure or digestion.

Symptoms appear in a person's 50s and advance quickly over five to 10 years. Movement becomes difficult, and a person eventually becomes bedridden.

Symptoms include slowness in movement, stiffness, problems with balance, coordination, urinating, sweating and digestion.

Doctors performed a tilt table test, where they put the patient on a table and tilt it at different angles to measure the patient's blood pressure.

In a healthy person, the body and blood pressure compensate when you're tilted, so it doesn't go up and down.

"So that was causing all the fainting spells," Ortiz said.

Zapata started losing her mobility.

"Her balance, it started affecting that," Ortiz said.

He said his wife was still adamant about finding a solution.

"Still with a smile, still with that kind of lust for life that she'd always had," Ortiz said.

Zapata tried to keep walking as much as she could. She was on a treadmill, even against doctor's orders, because of the risk of her falling.

A short time later, Ortiz says his wife became bedridden.

She tried to continue teaching. She used a microphone with a speaker to amplify her voice for students. Soon after coming back from the hospital, she decided to step away from teaching.

"She fought it as long as she could because that was all she knew. Her students and teaching, and she loved it, and that was just another thing that this disease took from her," Ortiz said.

In May 2024, Zapata took all of her belongings out of her classroom and officially retired, which was another devastating toll.

"She advocated for herself so, so adamantly, and unfortunately it wasn't the result that she wanted or hoped for," Ortiz said.

After a six-year search for answers, Zapata died on September 16, 2025.

Like the disease, Ortiz thinks his wife was special.

"I just feel that maybe it picked her because she was even a rare soul," Ortiz said.

He wants others to share his wife's persistence and to keep fighting for their health.

Watch the video above for the full story.