Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:22 — 5.4MB) | Embed

Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Joshua Banker, I own over 20 pairs of Converse All Stars, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a story about how I dealt with the debilitating illness Ulcerative Colitis.

Today’s Fun Fact:
As I mentioned in the intro I LOVE Converse All Stars. So much so that I gave away all of my other shoes from dress shoes to running shoes and replaced them with Converse All Stars. I have every color except for pink. If I give a talk for work where I have to dress up I wear my custom black and grey pair. I discovered that it’s a great conversation starter when getting to know people. So with that said today’s Fun Fact will be all about Converse. My source for this is chuckconnetion.com where you can learn all about the history of the Converse All Stars:

Did you know that the Converse All Star shoes are nearly 100 years old? They were first produced in 1917 as a basketball shoe and they have changed very little since then. Why mess with perfection.

In the 1920s Converse changed the name of the shoe to Chuck Taylor All Star after the basketball player Chuck Taylor who became their brand ambassador. That’s how the shoe got its nick name Chucks.

What I Learned Yesterday
In 2008 I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. Colitis is an autoimmune disorder where your body attacks the colon causing intense discomfort and it caused me to lose a lot of blood. I lost a lot of sleep most nights due to the pain and the stress over not knowing how I would ever feel better. There were many of those nights that i cried myself to sleep. I never wanted to shop anywhere unless I knew they had a public restroom with more than one stall. I would take a few trips to Southern California from Central California to visit friends and family. I can tell you what almost every public restrooms looks like along the way. I joked once that I was going to write a blog titled, “The Bathrooms along Interstate 5.”

Socially it ruined me. It was hard to hang out with people when I would feel awful all of the time. The conversations would always be dominated by them asking details about my health because they would notice how picky I was when I ordered food. If they didn’t notice that they noticed how often I had to leave the table. Everyone had their “tips” on what would help me feel better when in reality they had no business offering advice. All of their “solutions” only offered false hope.

Around 2010 my doctor discovered that my illness spread from being in just a small part of my colon to the entire colon. Completely damaged. I had to take several Iron pills a day to make up for the blood loss. It was so bad that the doctor strongly suggested that I make an appointment with a surgeon to have my colon removed. According to him there was little chance of me recovering and the only way I could live a discomfort free life was to have it taken out.

I am a very positive person but this was beginning to wear me down. Early on with my illness at work and at church, only the people closest to me knew how depressed I was. I got good at faking it by keeping a smile on the outside as I was dying on the inside but as my health continued to decline and I began to look like a shell of who I once was. It became obvious to everyone around me. The rapid weight loss, the bags under my eyes, and the pale skin from the blood loss.

I began accepting the idea that I was going to have to have surgery. I soon discovered that there were many people in my life who have had the same illness. I even discovered that one of my friends had her colon removed and had an ostomy bag. She shared with me that her life was so much better after the surgery because the pain was gone. I talked with other people who have had different types of surgeries to correct the illness and most of them enjoy life so much more now. I went from fearing what it meant to live without my colon to being comforted that life wouldn’t be over by having such an invasive surgery.

And then something changed. The company I work for got purchased by a large corporation and we had to change our insurance. With that change I lost both my specialist doctor and my general doctor. They were very supportive of me on my journey and so I was very sad to have to lose them. I was trying to find any way possible to keep them but in the end I had to get new doctors and little did I know at the time that that was the best thing that could have happened to me.

The doctor’s office I chose is run by a respected doctor in the community. He personally wanted to work with me because he believed that with a change in my diet I could get better. He was convinced that if I gave up wheat my gut would clear up. Personally I thought he was crazy. That was the same advice friends and family who didn’t know any better recommended. The thought of me giving up things like pizza, pasta, and Oreo cookies seemed impossible but I had a choice: Do I give up the foods I love or do I lose my colon. So I took his advice. Now years later, I very rarely eat anything with wheat and I don’t miss it at all. Earlier this month my doctor told me that my colon is now completely clear… no signs of my illness. I have to continue taking medication and watch my diet but it is worth it because I feel so much better. I do experience some discomfort but it is very rare and it is nothing compared to how I used to feel. Those days of intense pain and blood loss are behind me.

Here’s What I Learned
1) Hope for the best: Always hope that things will get better even when people are telling you to give up.

2) Prepare for the worst: If you prepare for the worst possible scenario, when the bad times do come you will be mentally ready for it.

3) Talk to the people in your life who have been there: The people who had been through the pain helped give me hope that my life wouldn’t be as bad as it was forever. My pain and suffering would eventually end one way or another.

4) When you feel like you’ve lost all hope, try something new: I thought people who gave up wheat were crazy and I never imagined I could give it up but now years later I rarely crave anything that has wheat in it. Remembering how bad I felt makes it easy to stay away.

5) And finally the most important lesson: I have become a better person from this. I have so much more sympathy for people who are suffering or going through depression. I know how it feels to lose all hope when it seems that everything in life is falling apart. I can come along side others and let them know that in time life does get better.

I’m Joshua Banker and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.

Follow Golden Spiral Media on Twitter at GSMPodcasts and facebook.com/goldenspiralmedia. To subscribe to Stuff I Learned Yesterday visit goldenspiralmedia.com/subscribe.  If you’d like to join our popular Facebook group please go to facebook.com/groups/stuffilearnedyesterday and if you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes by going to goldenspiralmedia.com/itunes.