Ulcerative Colitis
“Sorry, I can’t play basketball today.” As I hung up the phone, I returned to my seat, which was stained with fresh blood. Though I hated the cramps and my constant donation of blood to the porcelain throne caused by flare-ups, I was more bothered by the fact that I had to stay home for yet another week by myself.
For almost half my life, I have had Ulcerative Colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease. For years, I felt shackled by my constant need to access a restroom on short notice. Although my grades stayed high, I struggled to do make-up work after hospitalizations and home stays. I was exasperated by my need to take medicine several times a day, causing interruptions in my basketball games. My mother insisted that I keep my medical condition to myself, and I complied; it seemed that bathroom problems were not something to bring to people’s attention. Calls from my friends’ asking me to play pickup games gradually tapered off.
A few years ago, my doctor changed my prescription, which controlled my flare ups better. As they became less often and painful, I was able to venture out of the house more. This led to me searching for activities that engaged me in interesting discussions and challenged my competitive nature, something I had sorely missed while staying at home. After taking AP World History in sophomore year, I was inspired to start a local Model United Nations (MUN) chapter.
I immersed myself in MUN and was overjoyed to explore something past my suburban Simi Valley confines. My duties in this program encouraged me to plan ahead of time with my medicine and find bathroom accommodations so I could be free to handle the more interesting challenges of setting meetings, creating teams, assigning topics, agendas and logistics.
Being able to work with others was something that hadn’t always been a possibility for me due to my health, so collaboration is one of my highlights of MUN. I make myself available to the members of my team, spending several hours each week showing them how to research their topics. Though topics like Ireland’s role in Nuclear Disarmament in Iran may seem daunting, I even helped a team member conduct research and win awards at the Cerritos Conference last year in just that topic.
Flare-ups were sometimes induced by stress so, to limit them, I had to learn to be as relaxed as possible. I found that a tense atmosphere hurts teamwork, so I try to create an environment where my teammates can support one another. If someone botches a speech during moderated caucus, for example, our other delegates loyally race to make up the time in the dual delegation. As a result, my team members rarely miss practice and enjoy participating and preparing for conferences.
My team’s strength is in its cohesiveness, built through telling stories in the hotel room before the conference and cheering for each other at our year-end banquet. As we steadily gained more awards over the year, I’ve helped my team see that while individual effort plays a large role in MUN, being able to work together has been at the heart of our success.
The success of our MUN team has led me to change my relationships outside of MUN as well. Recently, I’ve even opened up to my friends about my condition. Now, they are understanding if I can’t play basketball during an attack and I am grateful when they offer to distract me with video games if basketball isn’t an option for me.
I am now emotionally equipped to deal with my disease, and inspired by my activities beyond my home. I take advantage of my bouts of good health and I have learned to plan and prepare carefully, so I have the freedom to enjoy life and friends spontaneously.