The Trouble with Being Human (Part 1)

Today I'm going to share something personal with you. Very personal. Something I probably wouldn't normally write about, but I feel like I need to because I know there are others out there who are struggling with similar situations. So, here goes...

I have an autoimmune disease known as ulcerative colitis and this is my story.

The summer after I graduated high school, I was on vacation in the Smoky Mountains when I began experiencing some unusual digestive issues (stomachaches, irregularity... forgive me for that one… and such). I didn’t think too much about it, though. I just credited to traveling or something weird like that. I figured everything would return to normal once we returned home. 

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Things didn’t return to normal; they started getting worse. I soon started experiencing more severe stomachaches and… forgive me again… bleeding. I should have gone to the doctor right away, but I was stupid and didn’t want to. It finally took me getting scared I might have cancer for me to go. *Free advice for stubborn people like me who don’t like going to the doctor: If you notice something really wrong with yourself (aka anything involving blood that doesn’t come from a cut or something like that) you NEED to go get checked out. Waiting it out usually just gives whatever it is that’s causing it time to get worse.

So, about a month after my symptoms became really noticeable, I finally broke down and went to the doctor. That’s when the tests began. Tests, tests, and more tests. Needles, needles, and more needles –which, by the way, are particularly awful when you’re a wimp like me.

Guess what they found: Nothing. It wasn’t this. It wasn’t that. So, they did more tests. In the meantime, my condition was slowly getting worse. On my first day of college, I was so drained and weak that my legs gave out while I was climbing a hill to get to my first class and I slid down the hill with my backpack and all. It was awful. I wasn’t about to let it get in the way of my life, though, and at that time, my life was wrapped up in my major: sports medicine.

My senior year, I’d served as the student athletic trainer for my high school’s varsity football team (to see if I wanted to go that route in college) and fell in love with sports medicine. I pretty much loved everything about it: the fast pace, the teamwork, the constant study of the human body, and the act of serving others every single day of your life. It’s one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever been a part of and even though I was in my first semester of college, I was blessed to be allowed to continue to work with the football team along with working in the training room alongside a great athletic trainer. As much as I loved the field I was in (pun totally intended), my schedule was pretty packed.

I was taking 16 hours’ worth of classes, a member of the honors club at school, spending my 2 hour lunch break in the athletic training room at college Monday-Thursday, then driving 30 minutes out to the football field to be at practiced as soon as I got out of class Monday-Wednesday. Friday mornings, since I didn’t have class, were spent working on the homework that generally piled up during the week because I was so tired by the time I got home around 5:30 or 6:00 I wasn’t able to focus on anything other than food and MAYBE a little TV. Then, around noon (if we had a home game, sometimes earlier if we had to travel to another school), I had to start getting ready to go out to the football field again at 2:30 and from 4:00 on, I was pretty much on my feet until 10:30-11:00 when I got home. Though, there were a couple of nights I got home closer to 1:00AM because we games 2 ½ - 3 hours away.

I don’t care who you are, that’s a pretty intense schedule for a college freshman, and when you’re as sick as I was, it almost feels like a death sentence. To make matters worse, by the second or third week of this, my condition was beginning to deteriorate more quickly than before. Soon, I was running on fumes all the time and in constant pain. Eventually, my doctor decided to give up on the tests and do a full upper and lower endoscopy. I had the procedure on a Thursday in September and the result was something I never would have seen coming because I’d never even heard of it before.

“You have ulcerative colitis,” the surgeon said. “I’m sure of it.”

“Okay?” I replied, still a little dazed from the anesthesia. 

Handing me an informational paper (gotta love those), he proceeded to explain “It’s an autoimmune disease in which your body attacks your colon, causing inflammation and ulcers. Naturally, the inflammations is painful and the ulcers bleed…”

“Yeah…”

“And, unfortunately, there’s no cure for it. Only lifelong treatment.”

And there you have it… the dullest conversation ever that changed my life.

At that point, my regular physician put me on a low-residue diet (look it up and figure out how east THAT was to adhere to with a schedule like mine) and referred me to a gastroenterologist. 

That’s things got even more complicated. I learned more about what caused my problems: My colon just randomly decided to produce the cells that call in my immune system to attack foreign bodies. Except, in my case, my body. When that happens, inflammation and ulcers result, which impair the colon from absorbing water (causing dehydration). Furthermore, without enough water, your body can’t process food as well, so end up you malnourished, too. I also learned about flares (when your body starts attacking) and remission (when, with medication and diet, your body stops attacking and your colon heals). I was prescribed a medication that was supposedly a miracle drug for UC and was informed that “most people are able to live normal lives.” Yeah. Okay.

So, with this new medication, I was hopeful that things would get back to some sense of normalcy –and much to my surprise, they did. By late September, I noticed that my symptoms were no longer worsening, and by mid-October, they were improving and I was actually starting to feel better. I still had some healing to do, but by the end of October, my digestive system was no longer in turmoil.

And then it got cold in Florida –and my joints started hurting. As with my original symptoms, I didn’t think too much about it at first, but a week or so in, I started getting nervous.  During an appointment with my GI doctor, he causally asked if I was experiencing any more issues and I (thinking he was talking about digestion) told him “no.” His response was, “Nothing at all… no joint pain or anything?”

“Joint pain?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m having joint pain, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“You have an autoimmune disease. Your immune system is faulty. A common problem associated with ulcerative colitis is rheumatoid arthritis because it’s all the same concept –body attacks itself…”

Well, that explained a lot, but that’s not something you want to hear when you regularly spend hours on your feet, in cold weather, often having to bend down and lift things. I decided I was just going to have to suck it up, though, and just deal with it. I’d done it before. I could do it again, and this pain wasn’t nearly as bad as what I was experiencing before.

I ended up managing for the rest of the season, but that was about it, and by the time it was over. I was exhausted. It’s funny how you don’t realize just how tired and stressed you are until you get past whatever’s tiring and stressing you out and then it hits you all at once. It took me weeks to recover from football season, and I soon came to the realization that pained me more than ulcers or swollen joints ever could: A career in athletic training was no longer a feasible option for me.

When I returned to school in January, I changed my major to English Education.

I’ve had my heart broken twice in my twenty-one years. That was the second time.