Richelle is a busy mom/step-mom to 2 growing teenagers. Speaking from experience, Crohn’s and teenagers can lead to a busy life. Richelle has been battling Crohn’s for 4 years now and has had 2 surgeries thus far. We hope that is all she will have to go through.
Richelle’s drugs of choice are Remicade, immodium, Lomotil, and a probiotic. With that drug combination, she has been in remission for 8 months.
There are a lot of challenges we all go through as crohnnies and one of them is loss of control. The struggle is real for those that aren’t familiar with Crohn’s. Along with that, we deal with trigger foods (we have to know what those are and learn them over time), nausea, abdominal pain, anxiety, and depression.
Most of the time, when you have weight loss, people will say, “You look great losing 50 pounds!” That’s not the case with Crohn’s. If you have a large weight loss like that, chances are, you are in a major flare. When we are sick like this, don’t think that we can no longer do things because of our condition. We make it happen no matter how sick we are.
Some of the things that we all fear is new or returning inflammation/blockages that will cause us to have a permanent ostomy in the future. Other fears that Richelle has is not being able to get hired since a lot of times, there are gaps in employment. When we do get a job, the fear of getting sick again and then starting over is difficult to think about.
Richelle is married to her second husband that has been supportive through her trials and lives with her 2 children. She loves to sing, watch TV, camp, go to the beach and casino, play board games and feed the homeless. Crohn’s has held her back from camping as much as she would like to, shopping, walking, and sleeping. She like many others have the financial hardship that we all face with mounting medical bills.
It is Richelle I run for.
Want to help find a cure? Please help me get to my new goal of $3000 and support me and my ‘crohnnies’ help find a cure and run this marathon together.
Running and Chasing Medals with Crohn's Disease 