When I landed in the hospital my Junior year of college with a flare-up, I really didn’t know much about Colitis, despite suffering from it for nearly five years. I failed to research the disease and passed it off as something that I could control ignorantly through medication and monitoring. Because of my lack of research, I didn’t understand how people adapted and thrived while living with IBD. As a college athlete at the time, I laid in the hospital wondering if I would ever return to the baseball field after my severe bout and surgery.
During that month in the hospital, I read an article in the local Winston-Salem newspaper regarding NFL quarterback David Garrard. This article probably wouldn’t have been published in most newspapers around the country, but Garrard was from North Carolina where he also played college football (East Carolina University). The article stated that the NFL quarterback had recently been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. As uneducated as I was about IBD, I knew that Crohn’s was Colitis’ ugly cousin that effected the entire digestive system. Given the mental and physical stress placed on athletes, I wondered what this meant for Garrard’s career: the daily stress of preventing a flare-up or knowing your vulnerability would just build on his already pressured life. But my knowing that a fellow athlete, one who grew up and played not too far from where I laid in my hospital bed, was dealing with the same issues and asking the same questions as I was somewhat comforting.
Since his diagnosis, Garrard has starred for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Below is a short clip about his life with Crohn’s (it’s from 2008 but still relevant).
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