Team Challenge Progress: Week of 9.23 to 9.29

Thank you to my amazing donors for the past week!  You have helped me get even closer to my fundraising goal.  I am now up to 70%... check out my fundraising status bar on my donation page!  Together, we will help support more research through The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation.

This past week's donor honor roll:

• Cody Locke
• Matt Sakumoto

Team Challenge/Crohn's Progress

Running has actually been going reasonably well, despite the Crohn's flare and my knee issues.  I was actually able to complete my 10-K race this Sunday (I ran on my treadmill during the Green Bay Packer game... which always gets me fired up).  I completed the run in with a time of 53:35, which is an 8:38 pace.  I am pretty happy with this, given that I had to slow up once for my knee pain, but otherwise, I do feel like incorporating some speed/race work has been making me faster.

Also, because of my continued anemia (have been hanging around in the ~10 mg/dL range for the past year and a half), I finally asked my gastroenterologist to run another iron study.  That came back showing that my iron stores are quite low... I have a ferritin level of 7 ng/mL (ferritin is a protein in the body that stores and releases iron in a controlled fashion, and the normal range for females is something like 15-200 ng/mL).  Thus, oral iron supplementation has not been sufficient to boost my stores, so my GI doc has ordered some intravenous iron infusions for me.  Hopefully these infusions will help my body make some more red blood cells, which would improve my running (and general well being).

I haven't had any clear response to the methotrexate yet, but it is still early.  Supposedly, it will take about 3-6 weeks to show symptomatic improvement.  Hope it kicks in soon!