My TV debut with News 12 NJ! I discuss having inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and ostomy surgery alongside Rosemarie Golombos, Executive Director of the NJ Chapter of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. Thank you, Prashanthi Musapet, for the special segment and for helping to create awareness and acceptance for these awful diseases!
(Daddy at his Doctoral Commencement at Columbia University in the ’70s.) This Father’s Day I honor all fathers. I especially honor my father who devoted his life to the sciences and to his family. He toiled endlessly until the very last minute working until he couldn’t anymore all to ensure his wife and daughters could get by without him. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder how much better life would have been if he could have lived to see his girls all grown up. ? His battle with Crohn’s and later colorectal cancer may have taken his life but he has become my inspiration to fight incessantly for my…
Every single year the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation chooses a local Adult Honored Hero who shares his/her story and is honored at the Take Steps Walk in the spring. And every single year I attend the New York City walk, raise awareness and funds to help find treatments and someday a cure for these awful diseases. I bring my friends and my family together along with the Foundation’s Women’s Support Group so they can see that we patients don’t suffer alone, that many folks from all walks of life have been through hell and back at a young age. And every single year, one of my closest girlfriends has tears…
This blog post is a throwback to 5 years ago when I traveled to Vegas to celebrate Prashanthi’s 30th birthday! Happy birthday, Prash! This trip was important to me because it was one of the first times since my diagnosis that I let my guard down disease-wise to travel with good friends. In 2012, after my first RV fistula was found, I had my j-pouch diverted and my 2nd ostomy put in place. After recovery, I decided that my illness had been consuming me whole. It was now do or die–either I restore my sense of self by challenging myself or I languish in misery from not trying. I hit…
As I walked up the steps toward Capitol Hill, the realization finally struck: I was really doing this. I was really lobbying for better healthcare legislation for patients like myself. More than 100 volunteers and I had traveled from all over the country to Washington, D.C., as part of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Day on the Hill program (DOH). And we all shared one mission: to bring our stories forward to advocate for improvements in legislation for all of us suffering from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). (Courtesy of Tina Aswani Omprakash) This was the first time I had lobbied for anything, let alone for IBD. I was nervous and excited…
