You Are Tougher Than You Think

With my 25th birthday right around the corner I feel like there is no better time to do this. Everyone keeps telling me this is a milestone birthday, and yeah I get it. A quarter century is something to celebrate. It's just weird to look back at my last 25 years. I was diagnosed with UC 21 years ago. It's not just a disease to me, its who I am. You don't really know me unless you know my past. Some of my best, most prominent memories are from my sick days. I sometimes feel bad when I talk about them because to me they're happy memories, but to others they're kind of depressing. So here we go... 5-year-old Sammi: You are forever my hero. I know every kid is super excited to grow up into this amazing adult but I am half the person you are. I promise you that (and no its not because I'm missing more organs now then I was then, but that too). You aren't afraid of what your future holds. You live every day in the happiest of ways. I know being in the hospital i...

People always talk about how pets take after their owners. Now I'm finding this to be incredibly true. A few months ago my soon-to-be roommate and I were talking about wanting a dog when we finally moved in together. We started doing research on dogs that were available for adoption before we even found a place to live. After a few days (okay maybe weeks) of looking at dogs to adopt I was talking to my mom about our plans. That was when she asked if I had seen the dog that a family friend was fostering. Needless to say, within 3 days of seeing his picture on Facebook my friend and I decided he had to be ours. Fast forward to now, he is living with my parents until we move into our new dog friendly apartment. Now, you're probably wondering why I'm sitting her rambling about my dog on my medical blog. As you know I have Ulcerative Colitis. My best friend has GI issues as well. Luckily for her, we became friends in time for her to finally start seeing a doctor and getting on...

I've been thinking long and hard about what I want to write about for my anniversary post. I started listing off different options and finally settled on it. But now that I've come to actually writing it, it just doesn't feel right. Don't get me wrong, it is a topic I want to talk about some day. Right now, with everything going on around us, it just doesn't feel like the right time to preach about something like that. Instead I want to use this to reflect on the past couple of months. I'm not going to preach politics. It's not what I do here, that's not the purpose of this blog. This blog was built to be a support system to anyone who is in need and right now, I think everyone needs a little love, support, respect, and understanding. I'm not going to go into specifics because that's not the point of this. Instead I want to say that no matter what happens, you, yes you reading this, belong. I care. I will fight with you and fight next to you. ...