It’s painful to write this right now at 430am as I lay in a hospital bed in my bedroom. My life has been turned upside down.
That may sound dramatic and maybe on the outside it is, but in August I just celebrated the 5 year anniversary of starting this blog and my YouTube channel. That was shortly after being told I had finally been in remission for the past 5 years from the severe Crohn’s Disease and Colitis that had been plaguing me for 14 years. Then, suddenly, the remission ended. Within weeks I was deteriorating and in the hospital again.
All of the work I had done to make my body stronger the last year in a program in order to play with my two year old was gone. All of our plans for the immediate future as a family. Gone. My daughter’s 2nd birthday is a blur for me and I didn’t get to help her go trick or treat for the first time.
Hurricane Milton came and went as a blur in my mind as my wife periodically had to carry me into our interior room every time there was a major tornado threat.
What had happened?! That was all I could think over and over in my mind.
I appreciate this moment to feel sorry for myself. I know everyone has craziness in their lives so no one wants to be brought down by yours. I get that. I just wanted to record this where I first started it.
Life in perspective
Unfortunately not even doctors could definitively answer my question. All they can say is that some patients just stop taking to the medication. I won’t lie, this has been one of the hardest periods of my life to try to process.
This has always been a photo journal for me besides where I record my film adventures. Therefore I like to share life updates. Even if just for myself.
For example, I was able to go back to my posts from 2019 and read about the last time this had happened to me, back when I started my love for film.
At that point I started learning film and manual exposure, and photography became something so important to me that I never stopped sharing my content for the next 5 years.
I don’t know what my future holds now as far as my film photography goes. A lot of plans are being necessarily pushed to the side for now, but I’d like to revisit where I started with you all.
I want to start taking photos of my journey again, and use it to help myself get through these difficult times the way I did in 2019.
A lot of times Illness is the body’s way of telling you to slow down. I was definitely pushing myself very much to get where my family and I wanted us to be before this happened.
I have a very long way to go to walk again. I have to start over with a new medication once it can be approved by the powers that be. I hope you’ll come along with me. Either way that is what I will be sharing here for the foreseeable future. Any positivity and cheerleading along the way would be an added bonus.
Finally, this saying was born from the beginning: stay motivated and keep shooting.