Update on My Team Challenge Training for Half Marathon- I got UC

Hi, My name is Adam, and I have UC.  I was diagnosed about two years and a few weeks ago.  But I had symptoms for quite some time before that.

What is really crazy to see is how similar my story is to so many other people on this website.  I for sure remember the times when I thought that my life was going to be spent about 25% of my awake time in the bathroom.  Somedays, it seemed as though almost half my time was spent in the bathroom, and the remaining half was spent wondering if I should be walking to the bathroom.

I definitely remember the days which seemed like every other day when I would get a ride from my wife down to the local Walgreens Pharmacy to pick up a new prescription of asacol or colazal or prednisone or sulfasalazine.  Or the trips to the infusion center to get my remicade infusion or even the times when I was testing out Humira to see if that would do the trick and get my ulcerative colitis under control.

But, right now, and for about the past year, my UC symptoms have for the most part gone away.  Sure, I do have days or a day or two or three in a row where things seem like, “Oh crap, I sure hope this isn’t a colitis flare getting ready to kick in again…”  But the reality for me at least has been that I haven’t really had much to worry about in terms of my UC.  I do follow the SCD diet almost 100% of the time, and it seems to be working for me.  I’m off all medications and have been for one year and two weeks, and I’m pretty happy I am off them.

I joined the Crohn’s and Colitis foundation a few weeks ago, with the goal of completing the Las Vegas Half Marathon and to also help raise donations for the CCFA to support alternative medicine for UC research.  My mentor in my CCFA chapter has told me she will try her best to make sure that is where the money I’ve raised will be given, which makes me happy.  I am personally against medications at this point in my life, as they did very little if anything for me.

At the end of the day, I’m starting to realize that it simply takes time for many people to come to terms with the fact that they have a “disease”.  I’m most definitely still NOT at complete ease with that fact.  But everyday that goes by makes it easier to realize and live with.  And reading other people’s stories ahs helped me a TON.  I’m not sure if  its the fact that I feel more normal knowing others worry about the things I worry about with regards to UC, or that others have/had the exact same strange symptoms as me, or that others have found ways to cope with their disease that are similar to me, BUT, each day I think life is getting somehow back to normal.

Thanks to everyone who writes stories on this website through the Colitis Venting Area, and thanks to all the sponsors of my current Team Challenge with the CCFA.  If you are interested in making a tax deductible donation to the Crohn’s and Colitis foundation on behalf of me, you are most welcomed to do that.  Here is the link for that: http://www.active.com/donate/lv10norcal/adam

So far I’ve raised about $1300 which is pretty cool, and a massive big thanks to everyone who has sponsored me so far!!

-Adam (go SF Giants)

PS:  If you are just banging your head against the wall right now and feeling depressed that you don’t have any control over your UC, I know how you feel.  I was feeling the same way for a very long time.  I was also thinking that surgery didn’t seem like too bad of an option(many people that have surgery are super happy they did, don’t forget that, thats what the doctors have told me too).  I didn’t know what to do.  But, at the end of the day, it was another person with UC who helped me out.  She told me about her colitis diet treatment that she was using with success.  I hope that in some way, either this story, or other stories on this site can be of some type of help to others who were stuck with their UC like me.  It doesn’t really matter how, if anyone with UC can make someone else with UC feel better, I think we call that a WIN!

Lastly, I have recently been putting up some videos about my meeting with a local microbiologist who has completed extensive studies on the human gut.  I hope some of you are taking the time to watch some of these videos(I know that at times they may seem very technical).  What has fascinated me is that the diet that I follow is based on the belief that the human microbial gut enviornment is the place where they symptoms of ulcerative colitis are born.  So, with changing the diet, it is possible to change the “bad microbes or “gut flora” if you want to call it that, and you are actually able to fix the ulcerative colitis symptoms when the gut is in a healthier more stable state.   Well, if I lost you in this paragraph, there is a great website page that I would suggest for everyone to read which explains this idea much better(this is the site link here).  It comes from the official website of the SCD diet which is what I follow, and to me, the science behind makes sense.  And after meeting with the scientist last week, it makes even more sense.  So, many more videos to come from that meeting/interview, it has just taken me a bit of time to get them all up and viewable.

UPDATE: Here is the picture of a sign that I was wearing on my running shirt during the actual half marathon on Dec. 5th.  I just scanned it and now here it is:

Dec. 26th UPdate:

Hey, its been a few weeks since I did the half marathon.  For the record, I ran the first 7 miles, and walked the last 6.  It was super fun, tons of awesome people, and I highly recommend it to anyone.  Infact, if you want to do it with me next year, send me a comment and we’ll make it happen.  As long as I’m living, I wil lsurely be there in good old Vegas for next years event.