Vanessa

In 2006 I quit smoking. I was 30 pounds overweight at the time. 7 months later, andnow 40 pounds overweight, I decided if I could quit smoking, then maybe I could lose 10 pounds. And I started running. And I kept running. I ran a 5K, a 10K and then my first full marathon in 2008. By this time all the weight had come off and I was at a happy weight of 135. I ran in the winter, training for half-marathons that would take me to warm places. I went to New Orleans for their half marathon in 2010. I ran the Equinox Marathon, one very hilly trail marathon, in Fairbanks in September of 2010. I ran the Denver Half Marathon later that same year. I started training for the Little Rock Half Marathon in March of 2011. Instead, I got sick. I was in Chicago, on my way to Little Rock, and started getting horrible waves of arthritis. It would hurt to walk to the bathroom. I was exhausted. My hands couldn't close. I flew to Little Rock anyway, thinking it would get better but it didn't. It got worse. So, instead of running the Little Rock Half Marathon on a Sunday afternoon, I ended up at a Walmart Clinic trying to get help before I got onto my long flights back up to Fairbanks the next day. For months, the arthritis would not let up unless I was on high amounts of prednisone. I had a rash that came and went and spiking fevers over 101 at night. My white blood cell count and sedimentation rates were way off the charts. There were days I could barely walk, so there went the summer running season. Something was obviously wrong. I went to doctor after doctor and finally headed down to the Denver Arthritis Clinic in August of 2011. I was diagnosed with Adult Onset Still's Disease, a rare, chronic disease. It is like rheumatoid arthritis, only it has they other systemic symptoms such as the fevers and rash. Now I've got expensive, self-injecting medication to worry about. It has to remain refrigerated, so that will be interesting to travel with. But if it helps, if it means I can run regularly again and get my life back, it will all be okay. I just want to run again.