FEATURE
FROM BEDRIDDEN
TO IRONMAN: MY JOURNEY WITH CROHN’S DISEASE
HE WAS NEARING THE END OF THE RACE, BUT BRIAN GREENBERG THOUGHT HE COULDN’T POSSIBLY FINISH. HE HAD A STOMACH CRAMP AND HIS LUNGS WERE BEGGING HIM TO STOP.
A
t that point, he had done a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride, and was in the last leg of his 26.2-mile run. It had been over 15 hours, and he still had an hour of running to go. Pain. That’s what his entire body was screaming.
Just a few years earlier, Brian was experiencing a different type of pain. He could barely move without immense distress radiating from his abdomen. He was bedbound, living under the care of his parents, his days
punctuated by visits from a wound care nurse as his body tried to fight the symptoms of a badly inflamed gastrointestinal tract. For Brian, competing in the Ironman Mont Tremblant was an important personal milestone in what had been a 25+ year-long journey to outpace his Crohn’s disease, a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Since he was 11 years old, Brian’s own body has rebelled against him, causing him to sit on the sidelines for much of his teenage and adult life. In less than a decade, Brian’s condition evolved from mild stomach cramping to rupturing rectal abscesses. At age 21, while most of his peers were enjoying the care-free college lifestyle, he had a large part of his colon removed. At 28, he agreed to a full colectomy, a surgical procedure to remove his entire colon. Like most people who self-reported living with Crohn’s disease (82%, according to an online survey presented by AbbVie),*1 Brian experienced feelings
kPHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/PG/SPOONIEIRONMAN. 176
FLUENTIAL NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2020
