According to Wikipedia: Ulcerative colitis can occur in 1 to 20 cases per 100,000 individuals per year.
If you haven't already
seen, ulcerative colitis has also been in the news quite a bit lately.
Manchester United and
Scotland midfielder Darren Fletcher has had the illness for some time, missing
much of last season as well as only making limited appearances for his club
this season.
Ulcerative colitis is what I suffer from. In truth I don't like to say that I suffer from it, but it is an illness that I have and will most likely have for the rest of my days.
At the moment I take about 4 tablets called Mezavant per day. This is more tablets than I have done in the past, the reason for this being that I am particularly keen to get my stomach under a definitive control as it hasn't been too good for a couple of years.
While I was studying at University I let taking my tablets get out of hand, I would swing from going without them for months to taking them out of necessity because of the discomfort or pain I was feeling. Living the 'student lifestyle' didn't do me any favours either and left me hugely run down at times. I would sometimes have to spend entire days in bed out of exhaustion with my illness and lifestyle and would be ridiculed behind my back for it by housemates who didn't know any better.
I find that it is this exhaustion that I find most difficult to deal with and something that I struggle against on an almost daily basis. On a personal level, my main hope out of running this half-marathon is that I can gain a good base of fitness that will help counter balance this and leave me feeling fresher. Otherwise, there really isn't much to tell about my illness, the occasional stomach cramp aside, nothing else particularly bothers me about it, I am what I am and I try to live my life as I would if it wasn't there.
I was diagnosed back in 2005, around the time of my GCSE exams. At the time I was being told by doctors that the pain and discomfort I was feeling was due to 'exam nerves'. This really wound me up as anyone who's ever met me could explain, I just don't get wound up about these things and it took forever to get a proper diagnosis. It took a particularly bad turn, where I lost a lot of weight and couldn't get out of bed for my Mum to take me in to hospital and demand they do something. An emergency biopsy later and I had some tablets that could help ease the discomfort.
After a round of steroids I was pretty much back to normal and have coped quite well with my illness since. I soon put back on the weight I had lost and carried on living.
I have been inspired by knowing that one of my personal heroes, Sir Steve Redgrave, also has the illness - seeing what he's achieved shows it should be no barrier to success.
What troubles me is that there is no known cause to the illness, personality traits and ethnicity are among a few of the things believed to be contributory factors, but it's made eradicating the illness completely just about impossible at the moment. If I could help raise money that would help find out what causes the illness and helps find a cure, well that would be just fine by me.
I'm no fitness freak, sure I used to do a lot of exercise, but as I said before - 'University life' took it's toll. I'm not particularly fit but I do eat well. If I can bring my body up to a level where I can plod through 13.1 miles, please give what you can in support! Thanks.
http://www.justgiving.com/JoshuaGeorgie
