What that means to me, if you feel good and do you have your health under control, you can accomplish the goals you want and you can achieve what you want in life.
And don’t hold back.
Do what you love.
I grew up in gymnastics. I started gymnastics when I was 7 and immediately started competitive, and I did that right up until grade 12.
After graduating university, I continued exercising and continued trying to keep that up.
But when I got hit with sickness, the symptoms just started to kick in.
It got to that point where I called up the doctor and I said I can’t live like this anymore, like I need answers.
And so she referred me to a specialist and I actually ended up in the hospital before I even met with the specialist.
And it was that hospital visit, just based solely on my blood work, he was able to tell and my family history that it was ulcerative colitis.
So about a week later, I got a scope and they confirmed that diagnosis.
And it was actually that time when I was going for blood work to follow up to see how it was going, where I fainted.
That’s really where the treatment journey kind of started.
So in the hospital I was very anemic and I received 4 blood transfusions to help with that and was also put on an iron supplement to help as well.
And with being so sick, I lost so much weight, which was basically all my muscle.
My motivation was I, I really wanted to, to get my body back to where it was before.
And I figured it would help with my recovery because they say exercise helps reduce symptoms.
So I was like, what the heck, let’s let’s get back into gymnastics and and see what I can do.
Coming back and competing for my age is like crazy, let alone like getting to where I am with my illness.
What I look forward to is just continuing with my gymnastics journey, seeing how far I can go, progressing in my work, having more fun with friends, and socializing because I did lose out on a year of not being able to do fun things.
I just, I’m free to do what I want now and I don’t feel like I have to worry as much about what the future holds.
Of course it’s always there’s that fear in the back of my mind, but I know how to better manage my symptoms and better take care of myself and I just look forward to having having some fun and building some some new memories in the future.