Who wants to go to Peru?!

Hello there Readers!

I have some interesting news! I have been in contact with a counselor from Youth Rally, a camp that I went to for a couple of years ago. The Youth Rally is a camp for kids with a large variety of different bowel or bladder disfunction's, and as you may have guessed, Crohn’s is one of them! I attended Rally the summer after I had  my first ileostomy put in place and I got to meet a lot of other kids with ostomy bags too, which is part of the reason I am so comfortable with mine! The second year I attended rally we had 2 guest speakers who were my age. They had just finisher participating in a trek (a hike to the base camp of Mt. Everest!) with IBD adventures to raise money and awareness for IBD, Youth Rally, and Camp Canada (the equivalent to Rally but in Canada.) I had just recently started rock climbing because of another summer camp I go to, Leaders School. I really took an interest in climbing and hiking and when I heard that you could combine that with raising awareness for IBD, I knew I had to get involved. After the presentation I talked to Rob, and he said he would keep me on his radar. 

SO! After persistently messaging Rob and trying to get on one of these treks, I finally heard from him about a year ago about hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru. I immediately went ballistic. If you don’t already know, I lived in South America for 2 years when I was younger, but Machu Picchu was one of the very few tourist sites my family was not able to visit, therefor it has been on my families bucket list since my brother and I are grown up! The thought of getting to go there AND raise awareness just sent me off the edge! So I worked with Rob and got together sponsorship papers to help me pay my way. 

I filled these out back in August. 

The trek begins March 16th. 

The last time I heard from Rob was right before I had surgery to remove my colon. 

There is no way I am going to make this trek, because sponsorship hasn’t come through.

WRONG-O!

4 Days ago I got a facebook message AND an email from Mr. Robert Hill, informing me that my sponsorship had gone through. I had a way to get to Peru. PERU. In South America! Not Peru in Maine (although there is one.) So my blood pressure shot up as my adrenaline started pumping and I quickly dialed my parents phone number asking for my passport to be scanned and sent to me. Well, that call is what reminded me that I had surgery less than 3 months ago. Crud. I got my passport and started working with Rob on some more information, but what are the chances that I my parents will really let me travel out of the continent EXACTLY 3 months after surgery (Yup, December 16th to March 16th. 3 months.) Honestly, I had this gut feeling that it wasn’t going to work out. I had been working for a year to get this to happen and month before hand its just going to fail. Not to mention that I hadn’t done ANY fundraising because I didn’t know if I was going to make it. I also haven’t exactly been working out, I mean, I go to dance team practices and Zumba, but is that really the same as the cardio and aerobic exercises I would need to get ready to be hiking at such a high altitude? So, no, I’m not going to Peru.

BUT WAIT. I got home for February break and had Rob call my parents. My entire trip is paid for, I don’t NEED to fundraise, and one of the kids who climbed to the base camp of Everest was only 2 months out of surgery. I have the will power, so why can’t I do it? After the longest 30 minute phone call ever, my dad put the phone back in the receiver, looked at me, and said “You’re going to freakin’ Peru.” So thats it! Its official! I’M GOING TO FREAKIN’ PERU!!!! 

So, ladies and gentlemen, here is the low down.

I leave for Peru March, 16th to meet up with part of the team in Toronto and fly to Lima from there. I get to spend a few days in Lima and then take a plane to Cuzco where I will spend another 2 days acclimating before we start the trek! The trek is then a 4 day hike. We will be spending 8 to 10 hours walking everyday and then spending the night in camps. On the 4th day, we get to wake up at 4am to reach Machu Picchu and take a tour! I don’t want to spoil much more, but that is the basic itinerary! 

I am not going on this trip to fundraise. I am going on this trip to raise something else. Awareness. I have always been a huge advocate and I have spoken at a couple different places about my story, but this is the biggest chance I get! My mission is not to get 1 $100 donation, but to get 100 $1 donations. If you are reading this, it would mean a lot to me if you could stop over on the Youth Rally page and donate to camp so that other kids can have the same opportunity I did, and maybe get to where I am one day! But if you can’t, try to find time in your day to talk to someone about IBD, direct them to my blog! Spread awareness! 

Check out the website! http://ibdadventures.com/

Decisions

This is another paper I wrote to show imagery and detail for my writing class. It discusses the decision I made to have my colon removed this past Christmas. I am doing really really well now and already back dancing with the dance team at UMF and skiing with friends! Hope you enjoy a little bit of my story!

I was sitting on the exam table, watched by the evaluating eyes of my doctor, surgeon, and concerned parents. “I just want it gone” I repeated for what was probably the tenth time in the conference. My parents sat side by side watching me, reading my face as they had learned to do after 18 years. But I could read theirs back. They were worried. It was time. Time for me to start making my own decisions. Even though they could talk to me and help in my decision making, ultimately the choice was up to their little girl. They could see that this was what I wanted; I could see this was what worried them most. In the medical world, once you turn 18, living with your parents isn’t enough for them to make decisions for you.
     I had the spotlight, everyone was focused on me. It had been four grueling years of new medications, IV nutrition, central lines, surgeries and weeks missed of school. I was done. I didn’t want to save my colon any longer. Looking into my doctors eyes I realized I had streaks of tears running down my face. She looked defeated, disheartened by the idea that after four years in her care, we had exhausted all medical treatment. My stomach climbed into my throat and streams crawled down my face. I felt as though I was giving up, something I had a very little experience with. But I wasn’t giving up; I was making a decision necessary for me to live my life. “Improving my quality of life” is how the doctors referred to it. Getting rid of the problematic colon would give me the chance to be me. It wasn’t giving up, it was moving on. I was moving on from weeks of hospital stays, pain and the ever growing list of toxins being dumped into my body. I was moving on to be an adventurist, a student and a leader. I wasn’t giving up.
    I knew what I wanted. Swallowing more chemicals and playing guessing games with medications wasn’t going to get me up a mountain. I knew the only thing that would give me the active life I wanted and make me happy was to undergo surgery. The mood shifted in the room as my audience came to terms with my decision. I was finally going to get rid of my large intestine.
    The ticking began as my doctor started typing in her computer, filing forms to send me through to surgery. My surgeon pulled out consent forms, and my parents  looked at me, knowing this was the decision I’d had coming for years. The pen was passed like the olympic torch as I signed my life into the hands of my surgeon. It was now up to his skilled hands to take me apart and put me back together in order for me to have the “quality of life” that I wanted to live by; the quality of life I had not had in over four years.
    I sit here today, with what hardly seems to be an empty cavity in my stomach. Although six feet of my intestine are now incinerated and gone, I finally feel whole. I can finally be the active, energetic, leading person I have always wanted to be. I didn’t lose part of myself, I gained what I had been missing the whole time. My quality of life is where it is supposed to be for any nineteen year old college student. Yes, I am now missing six feet of what most people assume is a vital organ, but I have gained a life.

         Recovering in the hospital the day after surgery! Up in a chair and everything!

 This was skiing at Sugarloaf in mid-January with my friend Katie!

Thanks for reading!
<3 Holly

Lazy me and English Class

WELL. I OBVIOUSLY suck at blogging. But I'm hoping it will get better, I am going to start uploading some of the papers I am writing for an English class because they are mostly personal narratives about me and the people I surround myself with. Perhaps someone will find them interesting! The first one I will attach is about dance, and how I've felt on stage through the years!

“Mr. Smee, Thats Me!”

    I spent a lot of time thinking about a time I’ve been different or pretended to be different than who I am. At first when I couldn’t think of anything I thought maybe I wasn’t being honest with myself. When I thought about it, I have always tried my hardest to be myself. I’m not saying I never have, I don’t think thats possible in adolescence. There were surely times in middle school, when I was trying to find a group I fit into, where I tried to crack some funny or “inappropriate” inside joke, but nothing that stands out. Racking my brain for a story I could recall details of, I soon realized there was, or were, times when I was continuously pretending to be someone else.
    I have been a dancer all my life. Even before I started taking lessons, I was a dancer. My mom would teach me the basics, because she was once a dancer too, and I’d take off twirling around the room, spinning in my own little world to the music playing in the background. After I began taking lessons, I climbed the ladder of levels quickly. I started preforming in ballets, first as a duckling in “Peter and the Wolf,” then a pumpkin and a firefly in “Cinderella,” and next I landed my first lead role! I got to dance as the Apprentice in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” At the time, I was in 5th grade, heads shorter than everyone else, and was the scrawniest stick figure you’d ever seen, but when I set foot in the studio for rehearsal, I got to be “The Apprentice.” I put my heart and soul into rehearsals, hoping to get each and every pas de chat, chassé, and pirouette just right before the many members of the water danced their way around the stage only to throw me in the fountain before I could be saved by the old Sorcerer. On the stage magic happened when I truly became The Apprentice. The lights felt hot on my skin as I stole the Sorcerer’s wand and found my way to the center of the stage where I soon fell asleep. I was no longer pretending to be punished for causing a disaster with brooms and water, I had actually caused it, and I was actually in trouble. This was the first time I ever truly became someone else. You can feel the role take over your body, a magic that can only happen when the curtains rise and the lights heat up your skin, and you realize you are on display for everyone in the audience, like a lizard in a tank.
    My favorite role to play was not a lead. As Mr. Smee in “Peter Pan” I got to dance an evil, squeamish, side kick pirate, who perhaps wasn’t ready to take on all that was thrown his way. This character was so far from who I had grown to be, as a now 18 year old soon-to-be-college student, but I completely fell in love with it and grew into the part. I distinctly remember performing opening night, on a small stage in Dover-Foxcroft, hearing the audience laugh as I comically struggled and put all my weight into pushing the cage filled with lost boys onto the stage. The whole show allowed me to be a comical character, something you don’t often get to perform in ballet.
    I played with the cues from the audience as I mimicked other dancers, or was thrown across the stage by the commanding Captain Hook. When Hook’s hat was accidentally thrown off in the thrilling fight scene I crept in from the wings, and claimed the hat for my own head! I didn’t need to use words to tell the audience that timid Mr. Smee was going to be as cool as Captain Hook one day!
    At the end of the show when I heard the applause and laughs as I took my stumbling bow, I knew I had successfully become the character, not just played the part. This feeling was reinforced by my ballet instructor approaching me after the show and exclaiming, “Holly, you ARE Mr. Smee. You commanded the audience like no other person on that stage.” So, maybe I should have let Wendy or Peter have a little glory, but the audience had become my friends, and I wanted to show all the little girls with big dreams of becoming ballerinas, that it is more than tutu’s and tight buns, (although I did have a very tight bun stuffed under my bandana!) It is about playing a part so well that you become the character, and have the time of your life on the stage.

SMEE PICTURES!
This first one is a scene on the pirate ship where I chased around MY personal side kick Starkey.

And here I am with Captain Hook!