What Illness Does Ry Have in The Last Sunrise? Her Tuberous Sclerosis Explained

Ry Pera’s illness in The Last Sunrise is not an invented disease created simply to increase the stakes of her romance with Julian. Ry has tuberous sclerosis complex, commonly abbreviated as TSC, a real rare genetic condition that can cause noncancerous growths or lesions in different parts of the body, including the brain.

For Ry, the neurological effects of the condition are particularly important. She experiences seizures, including one that interrupts her life as a dancer before she travels to Mallorca. Her doctors present medication and surgery as possible ways of managing her worsening condition, but both choices carry consequences that frighten her.

There is also a deeply personal reason Anna Todd chose TSC for her protagonist: Todd’s own son lives with the condition.

What is tuberous sclerosis?

Tuberous sclerosis complex is a genetic disorder associated with abnormal growths in organs including the brain, kidneys, heart, lungs, eyes and skin. Its effects vary substantially from one person to another.

Neurological complications can include seizures, which explains one of the most visible ways the disease affects Ry in The Last Sunrise. The movie opens her story around a medical crossroads after she suffers a seizure while dancing.

That episode is not simply there to establish that Ry is “sick.” Dance represents one of the parts of her identity that her health threatens to take away. Her frustration throughout the movie comes from feeling that every major decision is being filtered through her diagnosis.

Why does Ry take medication?

Ry uses medication to help manage her seizures. Her problem is that she feels the treatment dulls her emotionally. She describes herself as feeling numb while taking the medication, which makes the medical option that is supposed to protect her feel like another restriction.

That becomes particularly important once she reaches Mallorca. For perhaps the first time, Ry is away from the environment in which she has primarily been treated as a patient. She meets Julian, makes new friends and begins doing things without asking her mother’s permission. She eventually stops taking the medication because she wants to experience those feelings fully.

It is an extremely risky choice within the story. The movie does not make Ry’s condition disappear while she is falling in love. Her seizures and worsening health eventually force the problem back into the center of the narrative.

Why is Ry so afraid of surgery?

At the beginning of the film, surgery is presented as the alternative Ry desperately wants to avoid.

Her doctors believe an operation could address the dangerous neurological problems associated with her condition, but Ry is terrified by the possibility of losing her memory. That fear gives the romance with Julian additional urgency.

Memory is already one of The Last Sunrise’s central ideas. Ry goes to Mallorca believing her future may be limited, then fills the summer with experiences she never expected to have.

Losing her memories would therefore mean potentially losing the very period in which she finally began feeling that her life belonged to her.

It is why the movie’s final health crisis is more frightening than a conventional “will she survive?” cliffhanger. Ry has spent much of the story fearing two different outcomes: dying, or surviving without the memories that make her who she is.

Related: The Last Sunrise Ending Explained

Is tuberous sclerosis a real disease?

Yes. TSC is a real lifelong genetic disorder, although The Last Sunrise should not be treated as a medical guide to how every patient experiences it.

The condition can affect people very differently. Some individuals have comparatively mild symptoms, while others have significant epilepsy, developmental, kidney or other complications.

There is currently no single cure for TSC. Treatment depends on the individual’s symptoms and can include anti-seizure medication and, in appropriate cases, surgery or other therapies.

That distinction matters because Ry represents one fictional patient’s experience rather than the universal experience of people with TSC.

Why did Anna Todd give Ry tuberous sclerosis?

This is where The Last Sunrise becomes much more personal than its glossy summer-romance presentation suggests.

Anna Todd has spoken publicly about her son Asher having tuberous sclerosis. She has explained that she wanted to tell a story about someone living with the same condition, although Ry does not experience TSC with the same severity as her son. Todd has said the story actually began as a film idea before becoming the 2025 novel.

She wanted to bring some awareness to a condition many people have never heard of while still writing the kind of emotional romance her readers expect.

Todd has also discussed how writing the story was emotionally difficult because of its proximity to her family’s experience.

That makes Ry’s illness more than a narrative countdown designed to make her summer romance sad.

Is Ry’s story based on Anna Todd’s son?

Not literally. Ry is a fictional young woman, Julian is fictional and the Mallorca romance is not a recreation of Todd’s son’s life.

The personal connection lies in the condition itself and some of the emotional territory surrounding it.

Todd has explained that her son’s experience with TSC is more severe than Ry’s. Her intention was not to copy his life onto another character, but to create a protagonist with the condition and bring it into a mainstream romance.

That distinction is worth making because viewers searching for the “true story” behind Ry may otherwise assume that The Last Sunrise is biographical.