Team Challenge Recommitment!

First of all, I would like thank my recent donors.  I very much appreciate your generous support of my cause to raise money for more Crohn's research!!  With one month left to fundraise, I am about 80% of the way to my goal.  Check out the status bar on my donation page.

Donor honor roll (weeks 9.29 to 10.13):

• David and Nancy Rae Holzem
• Patrick and Stepanie Holzem

Raffle reminder

Just want to remind you that I am offering raffle entries in exchange for donations... and the grand prize is a GPS watch!  Please check out my donation page for more details!

Recommitment

The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation Team Challenge has a recommitment stage... basically ~midway through the fundraising and training they allow you to affirm that you will reach your goal amount and complete the race (or, alternatively, drop out).  Thus, I recommitted this past Monday (10.15).  Thanks to the support I have received up to this point, I feel confident that I will raise $2,700 by November 14th and run 13.1 miles on December 2nd.

Team Challenge Training & Surgical Recovery

So I would like to just let everyone know that I am recovering well from the surgery I had 10.3, and this surgery actually had nothing to do with my Crohn's.  On the contrary, this procedure was actually postponed multiple times because of health issues related to Crohn's... so, in a sense, it's actually good news that I was able to go through with it.  The surgery was a jaw surgery and was quite invasive, so I have taken the necessary time off of training for recovery.

The surgery itself went as well as could have hoped, given my circumstances.  My surgical team and GI care were well coordinated, and everyone was on board to ensure the best possible outcome...  so I thank everyone who was involved in my care (without naming names) for their diligence.  I also appreciate the care and assistance that I received from my husband and parents (who traveled from WI to help out).  Certainly, this made the recovery go more smoothly.  It was also good to finally have gotten the procedure out of the way, so that it won't impede any of the clinical decision making for my Crohn's treatment (more on this in a future post on clinical trials).

As for training, I am back to (slow) jogging at this point, but I have been able to complete 6 miles at a time, as long as I don't push it.  There are two issues that I am dealing with... one is obviously that my face is not completely healed yet, and the other is that I actually lost a good amount of blood during the surgery (on top of my usual, anemic Crohn's state).  My latest Hgb was 8.5 mg/dL, with a Hct of 25%, so I need those numbers to come back up before I start running harder.  Thankfully, I am getting some IV iron infusions to help boost my iron stores, since the oral iron supplement that I have been taking didn't seem to be doing the job.