I may have went to school for meteorology, but no pun intended with the title…alright maybe a little haha. Anyways, the “calm” was just life continuing on as usual. That encompassed the next 18 months or so starting with sophomore year of college. The first medication I was put on was Asacol, an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat inflammatory bowel diseases. A typical day was taking two pills each in the morning, afternoon, and night. I was also on daily supplements and vitamins. At first, it seemed like a lot, but like anything, you become used to it after a while.
So life was all good in Happy Valley. Classes got more difficult, but there was still plenty of time for fun and relaxation. Things like playing sports and going out on weekends were not an issue for me. I was eating normal…no restrictions. Sophomore year finished very differently than freshman year. I came back home to Pittsburgh in much higher spirits ready to enjoy a much needed summer.
The highlight of the summer was for sure the storm chase trip I went on across the Great Plains with my closest college friends. 
We ended up logging 3-4 thousand miles over the week long trip. We accomplished our goal of tracking down a few awesome thunderstorms, one to two of which were close to producing tornadoes. There were some very long days and tense moments, but it’s any weather enthusiast’s dream to go chase storms and for that, it was a very successful trip. More importantly though, I survived all those long driving stretches with no bathroom breaks. Looking back now, it was nice not having that issue on my mind.
After returning home and back to my summer job at a local greenhouse, I began to experience periodic stomach cramps. I normally wore a belt for work, but it came to a point where sometimes the tightness of the belt, which was never really that tight to begin with, around my waist was too much to handle. The bathroom trips were now becoming more frequent and there were even instances were I’d have blood in my stool. So its safe to say I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about what was beginning to happen.
I’d characterize the end of that summer as well as my junior year at college as the tremors you feel before an earthquake occurs. These were some of the issues that never fully went away from this time forward. But even so, I have to consider these times still part of the “calm” due to how much worse things actually got.
To show you things weren’t horrible, in August 2013, I was still able to participate in the Tough Mudder I had signed up for the prior March. 
Luckily, I had my best friend since preschool there the whole time in case anything happened. Before going back to college for the start of another year, I went back to my GI doctor and he switched me to Apriso, another anti-inflammatory drug. These pill capsules were really large and quite difficult to take at first, but the trade off was only having to take two a day in the morning.
School started up again and like always, it was great to be back with all my friends. Things weren’t too much different. The workload increased and so did the stress level, as I was now in a few leadership positions in some of our meteorology clubs. When my intestines wanted to spawn hell upon me, they could pretty much do so whenever they chose, but the more stressful times of junior year surely didn’t help the situation.
THERE’S NO EASY OR PRETTY WAY TO DESCRIBE THE SYMPTOMS OF A DISEASE LIKE ULCERATIVE COLITIS OR CROHN’S, SO THIS IS A DISCLAIMER THAT THINGS FROM HERE ON WILL START TO GET A LITTLE MORE GRAPHIC.
As winter approached, I was starting to use the bathroom more often than the earlier stages of my time on medications. More often than not, it was diarrhea and had some trace of blood…clearly not normal. This was the time where I started to notice certain foods creating more pain and increased bathroom trips than others. Leading the culprit list were dairy products and fatty, fried foods…literally a college student’s best friends, especially during the early morning hours of every Saturday and Sunday. BUT, I still had control of my bowels and was able to make it to the bathroom every time I had a stomach cramp or urge to go.
By the start of spring semester, I was beginning size up the battle I was involuntarily signed up for. A real kick in the nuts occurred when I was walking through a building on campus and a stomach cramp hit. I literally had the bathroom in sight, but just couldn’t make it (As a side note, I could tell you were every bathroom on that Penn State campus is…unfortunately haha). I won’t go into any further detail, but man, that was a real shot to the morale meter. This is when I realized I was fighting something much bigger than your “take a couple pills and you’ll be better” illness. These kind of incidents continued to occur throughtout the semester, but I’d like to think I was composed enough that I disguised any instances pretty well.
My close guy friends were a saving grace for me because I love to joke around a poke good-hearted fun at people…or myself, and that is exactly what I did. They were willing to listen to my stories and share a laugh with me. Not that I enjoyed making fun of myself, a grown 21 year-old man, for soiling my pants, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to go sit in a corner and sulk about it. That’s just wasn’t in my DNA. I had a degree to earn and a future to fulfill.
The Ulcerative Colitis Chronicles 