Part 1: The Beginning

Throughout high school, life was good. Life was real good! I was enjoying those last years at home before college like any other antsy high school upperclassman. Soccer was my passion since I was old enough to walk and that passion continued through high school as I was able to play during the spring and fall seasons with my closest friends. We were an unsung group of players with mediocre skill, but a chemistry unmatched by most teams we faced and that lead us to heights we sometimes didn’t expect. Those will be days I’ll look back upon for the rest of my life and know I have zero regrets about what we accomplished as a group.

I also ran the hurdles for our track team. Anyone who knows me well, will say I’m always the one doing crazy stunts that put my well-being in jeopardy. So the hurdles were a perfect match for me and they surely caused plenty of fall-induced brush burns and pain over the years. The 300m hurdles were my favorite event because I wasn’t as competitive in the 110m hurdles due to others having better technique than me. The 300m distance allowed me to put my speed to better use. I did quite well my senior year and came within one hurdle of potentially qualifying for states in the 300m hurdles. I tripped over the last hurdle I ever competitively ran in what would have been a personal best time for me and given me an outside shot of qualifying for states.

It’s crazy to think, but I may have hit my athletic peak during high school, something I did not think would be the case at the time.  Willing to let the sports spotlight go, it was time to become a small fish in a big pond and go pursue the academic career I wanted. It is safe to say I was the only one from my graduating class of approximately 350 students who went to pursue a degree in meteorology. The destination was Penn State University, located on a beautiful campus nestled in the college town of State College, Pennsylvania.

I had a great freshman year, meeting so many new friends, getting my fill of sports through pick-up games and intramurals, and most importantly, beginning my path to becoming a degreed meteorologist.

However, during the last week of that freshman year in May 2012, I began to have painful stomach cramps and found myself using the bathroom much more frequently than normal. Upon returning home to Pittsburgh after finals, I was in constant pain barely sleeping any at night. Good thing it was summer. I ended up going to see a gastrointestinal (GI) doctor and he said I needed to have a colonoscopy. Up to that point, the only thing I knew about a colonoscopy was that it was something you weren’t supposed to have until you were 50. Ugh…anyways, I had to go through with it and the dreadful news was delivered as positive for ulcerative colitis. At the time, this was a lot for me to process. I had no idea what ulcerative colitis was! Hearing the doctor describe it for me wasn’t a pretty thing to listen to. I was 19 at the time, but IMO, that’s something someone that age shouldn’t have to be told, just like any other chronic disease. We’re young, supposed to be healthy, and ready to conquer the world, right? Luckily, my youth and healthy, athletic lifestyle proved very beneficial in years to come.