Me and Crohn’s Disease
Part III: The Runs
“Look, it’s Elaine!”
My dad is pointing at the television, where the Robin Williams Jumanji is playing. It’s the scene where the aunt has jumped out of her car, unable to believe that a stampede of jungle and savanna animals is careening through the suburban street.
“Ha, ha, very funny,” I mutter, realizing my dad has been pointing at the lone rhino who is running quite a ways behind the rest of the herd.
Sad, but true. My career as a cross country runner was over before it began, and I only managed to finish one 3k race the whole season. And I was so far behind that the next race had started and was out of sight by the time I made it back to the start.
What had gone wrong?
At the end of eighth grade, one of my best friends had approached a few of us about coming to an orientation for anyone who wanted to run cross country the following year. I wasn’t really interested, but agreed to go so she wouldn’t be alone. We took the bus down to the local park, where practices were held, and listened to the coach explain his very methodical, very easy-sounding plan for introducing teenagers to long distance running. I thought, “Wow, even I could do this.”
The practices would begin over the summer, and by fall the new team would be ready. No one would be cut, and everyone would get to run. The goal was to beat other runners if you were one of the fast ones, but the rest of us were just competing with ourselves to beat our own best time. I decided to give it a try.
I am one of those weird people who enjoys exercise, and I’ve always been up for a walk. When I was younger, I biked through most of the neighborhoods on the south side of town, and we were always doing something outside in our back yard. Organized sports, however, were never my thing. My dad, who is in the Greater Akron Baseball Hall of Fame, instilled an interest in baseball, so I tried softball for one season in elementary school. Unfortunately, I was placed on a team with one of my classroom bullies, who made me so nervous that I couldn’t concentrate on the games. I begged my parents to let me quit halfway through the season.
I’ve never met a pool I didn’t like, so swim team was my next attempt at joining the world of jocks. My first summer I had fun hanging out with the kids around the pool during meets, enjoyed the early morning laps up and down the lanes (I told you I was weird), but never really cared about my times because I was one of the little kids on a big team and I hardly ever even had to participate in the races. The next year, I was an older kid on a smaller team since we had moved to a different city, and it became painfully obvious that my times were never going to get better. I always sat low in the water, and no matter how many laps I swam in practice, I was never able to get a good rhythm going with arms, legs, and breathing.
By the end of eighth grade, I was starting to come out of the awkward years of puberty and into a bit of a teenage normal. But my new body was uncoordinated and still had quite a bit of baby fat. I was ready for something new, and cross country seemed like something I could ease into. And I already enjoyed walking. How much harder could running be?
Things began to go wrong almost immediately.
The summer practices began with us newbies running just a mile, but it was already hot out in Northeast Ohio, I was losing water as fast as I could drink it. I had never paid any attention to how much I was drinking, and I had never been a big fan of water, either. Even when swimming, I only ever needed to visit the water fountain once during practice to sate my thirst, so I may not even have brought a water bottle my first time running.
Fun fact: approximately 90 percent of the water your body ingests is absorbed by the small intestine. If your small intestine, like mine, is spending its days being attacked by a very confused immune system, most of that water is sliding right on by and exiting your body as diarrhea. I had diarrhea every day at this point, I was drinking Coke, Kool-ade, and other junk full of sugar, and I was heading out into the heat and humidity for a run. No problem, right?
The first thing I noticed was that running caused nearly immediate cramping and spasms. I spent the first quarter mile of every run clenching my buttocks together and hoping I wouldn’t have an accident before I could get to a toilet. The cramps were most likely from dehydration as my muscles began screaming at the extra work they were being asked to do. I didn’t know that yet, so I just ignored them and figured the cramping would lessen as my body got used to it. The spasms I was used to, so I just pressed on and hoped no one noticed my weird gait.
If dehydration wasn’t a big enough problem, I quickly realized that my legs were not the sturdy stems I once believed them to be. It may have been my very first attempt at running two miles when my knee gave out. My ankles had been failing all over the place since day one, rolling and twisting nearly every time my feet hit the ground. But I thought I had conquered this problem by concentrating hard on my footfalls and working on keeping my toes straight in front of me.
At that time, the trail we were running took a fork at .75 miles and you could either run the dirt horse path or keep on the asphalt walking trail. On this day, everyone was running the horse trail, and I went right with them, though I was at the back of the group. I don’t remember the pain. I don’t remember what my leg did to cause the pain. All I remember was sitting down on a large rock a few steps down that dirt trail and deciding I was going to have to walk back to the pavilion we started at every day.
My knee began to bother me every day. I know now that I suffer from fibromyalgia, which causes nerves to misfire at joints, causing pain without swelling. I know now that Crohn’s disease patients suffer from a lack of calcium and vitamin D that are essential to healthy bones, joints, and muscles. But back then, all I knew was that my friends were running five, six, seven miles while I seemed to hit a wall at two miles that I couldn’t pass without injuries, dizziness, and painful cramping.
I felt like a failure.
I didn’t want to quit, so I spent the season cheering on my teammates and trying every day to run whatever I could. I knew I wouldn’t be back next season, and I was ashamed that I couldn’t do what seemed to be so easy for everyone else. I got the impression that the coach just thought I was a baby with pain or too lazy to run. I don’t know what my teammates thought. I was afraid to ask them.
I managed to tell myself that I just wasn’t good at running. It wasn’t “my thing.” It never occurred to me that this might be a brewing health crisis, or that anything was seriously wrong with my internal organs that made it impossible for me to be successful at running. I’d go through a few more misdiagnoses and intestinal smoke and mirrors before anyone would think to look at chronic issues as the root of my problems.
To be continued…
