We’ll start this one out positive because it’s all down hill from here. I was lucky enough to secure a summer internship in March, which lowered my stress level for those last two months of school before summer. Also, 
the culmination of two years of hard work securing university approval for the Penn State Storm Chase Club that spawned from a spontaneous fall 2012 storm chase that us 9 friends went on was about to pay off. We got university funding to take 3 cars and 12 students on a week long storm chase trip out to the Plains. This trip, unlike the one a year prior, was a lot harder for me. The long stretches of driving really strained my pain meter. There were luckily no accidents, but a fair share of unexpected stops to accommodate yours truly. Aside from all the health-related obstacles, it was a rewarding trip knowing us leaders, still just students, led a successful week-long trip for ourselves and the underclassmen who were also on the trip.
I returned back to State College in late May to begin my internship. I had a solid group of friends who were also staying the summer and was excited to spend those couple months at school without the hustle and bustle of 40,000 other students. However, I knew my health was far from where it used to be. Regardless, I had to push forward and deal with the manageable symptoms so I could perform to the best of my abilities at work. But that was the thing, I couldn’t deal with them. I went through training sessions for the first couple weeks that lasted a few hours at a time. This was basically a death sentence or at least that’s how I thought of it. I wanted to make a good first impression, but excusing myself multiple times as someone is trying to teach you things makes for very awkward situations. This went on for about a week before I was like “I need to tell them what’s wrong so I can lift this weight off my back”. That aspect was relieving mentally, but it sure didn’t make the symptoms go away which were still on my mind 24/7.
The summer continued on with constant trips to the bathroom at work. I wasn’t even eating as much and was trying to eat healthier by cutting dairy products and greasy foods. I was so desperate for a solution, I even went gluten-free for a couple weeks. God bless the people who are forced to that kind of diet permanently.
The summer was filled with a growing number of literally unavoidable accidents. I no longer had control of my body. The ulcerative colitis was strengthening its grip.
I lived less than a 5 minute drive from work and my only traffic was 2 stop lights. Yet, there were more than a few occasions where I couldn’t even make it that short trip without having an accident. It was especially bad if it happened in the morning as I’d have to turn around and come home. This would make me late for work, yet another negative impression on my employer.
It literally came to the point where I was afraid to venture too far from a bathroom at this point. Bus rides, walks across campus, short car rides, meetings, ect. You name it, it posed a huge challenge for me. That doesn’t even include the challenges I faced trying to stay fit and play sports. I mean it was the summer for goodness sake, I wanted to be outside. I had played sports since I was young enough to remember and having that leisure ripped right out of my life was really difficult. I tried to persevere through the hardships, but on a July 2014 afternoon, I had had enough. I went out for what I planned to be an easy 2 mile run. About 5 minutes in, obviously near no bathroom, it happened. It was a long and demoralizing walk back to my apartment. That was about the time I conceded that this cruel disease was taking my life away.
I was mentally exhausted trying to keep my sanity in check with all the daily hardships…it just didn’t seem fair to me. Luckily, one of my roommates, Adam Fink, from the prior school year, was also there for the summer. Just hanging with him after work allowed me to take my mind off things for a few hours and that was huge. As the summer winded down, I literally had just about enough energy to make it through my work day. My time away from work involved a lot of time sitting on the couch, laying in bed, or just sleeping. I was running on fumes. In late July, I developed a horrible fever one day after work and went straight to sleep. I had the chills all night, was having hallucinations, and woke up multiple times. It was like a terrible nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. I called off work the next day to try and sleep it off, but things were no better that evening either. The next morning I knew something was really wrong, so I called my parents and they drove to get me. They took me straight to our local hospital in Pittsburgh where the IV’s couldn’t have got in me soon enough. My body was rejecting all food and liquids and I was severely dehydrated and sick.
Another colonoscopy and multiple stool samples determined I had Clostridium difficile colitis, more commonly know as c-diff, which is an infection from a spore-forming bacteria that compounds inflammatory bowel disease symptoms. This meant I would be put insolation until the medications killed the bacteria. Great…another issue to deal with. Not only was I on an awful, all-liquids diet for 5 days, I was taking potent steroids and antibiotics to kill this bacteria. Thanks to all the medication, I developed thrush, a yeast infection in your mouth and on your tongue, which was literally awful. All I wanted to do when I was released after a week in the hospital was eat normal food, but because of the thrush, I totally lost my sense of taste and couldn’t enjoy any of the foods I was eating. But hey, I was in the comfort of my own home and recovering. That’s all I could have asked for at the time.
Prior to checking in at the hospital, I weighed only 134 lbs! For a kid who’s 6’0″ and
normally weighs 165 lbs, it shows the toll that second half of summer really took on my body. Upon returning to school for what I hoped could be a rewarding and successful senior year, my friends, classmates, and professors couldn’t help but notice how different I looked physically. Having only weighed 134 lbs a few weeks prior, I was still trying to put weight back on. To be honest, the next few months at school were just damage control for what ended up being the inevitable.
My symptoms returned quickly and were there to stay. I think it had a lot to do with the increased stress level again and that typical college diet, which isn’t always super healthy when you are constantly busy. It was not a fun fall for me. Most days consisted of only leaving the apartment to go to classes and meetings. I only made it to 2 of the 7 Penn State home football games, which was one of the things that hit me hardest. There’s nothing like College Football Saturday’s in Happy Valley and to know I was only about a mile away from all the fun as I watched on TV was tough.
I was on prednisone from August to October, which was a lot longer than my doctors wanted me on it. Prednisone is a steroid that is used to decrease inflammation in the body which I needed for my colon. Prednisone also weakens your immune system, which made it a double-edged sword for me.
Having immediately connected with the GI doctors in the State College area when I returned to school in August 2014, I had periodic visits with them to monitor my
symptoms, which were not improving on the prednisone. So I was put on Remicade, a powerful medication used for inflammatory bowel diseases that infuses antibodies throughout your blood stream. It was administered through an IV, but required I go to Mt. Nittany Medical Center once a month for the 3 hour infusion.
The constant awakening to stomach cramps at night really affected the amount of energy I had to complete my normal daily tasks. There were days where I was just too sick to even get myself out of bed to make it to class, which normally only required a 5 minute walk from where I was living. Going to the bathroom 20-30 times of day and losing so much blood and so many nutrients, I was constantly dehydrated while feeling achy and sore. It got so bad once, I had to have a friend drive me to the emergency room so I could receive IV’s.
With classes in full swing in late October, the daily grind became so difficult to deal with, I was put in the intensive care unit of Mt. Nittany Medical for a day before being brought to a general room, which I was in for another week. The series of events were something I was all too familiar with…a colonoscopy that said I had severe colitis, an all-liquids diet for a few days, and doctors who didn’t have any concrete answers for me. I even missed the Penn State – Ohio State double OT thriller as I could only gaze out my hospital room window at the beautiful scene outside Beaver Stadium.
The visits I got that week from some of my closest friends really meant a lot, though. As I was discharged from the hospital, I was still frustrated because I knew 100% that I was not healed; I knew the battle was not over. I’d compare the August and October hospital stays to using a defibrillator on someone who has just had a heart attack. The colonoscopy’s and all-liquid diets where like restarting my body, but not healing it. Maybe the doctors truly didn’t understand how the wide array of medications I was on weren’t working, but it was certainly frustrating watching my life and senior year of college deteriorate right in front of me.
So, on the morning of November 4th, 2014, I decided I could fight no longer. Knowing I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled at UPMC in Pittsburgh two days later, my mom came to get me that afternoon and I returned home, honestly not knowing when I’d return to Penn State.
The Ulcerative Colitis Chronicles 