Article about my arthritis

[Guest guest]

Hey,

Below is an article about me from the local paper for National Arthritis

Awareness Month.

Steph in VA

Minding the miles

Tim Hogan - Sports Editor

Culpeper Star Exponent

Sunday, May 22, 2005

You run a marathon with your legs. When your legs tire, your arms flex a

little harder and find an energy boost. If the arms and legs begin to go,

your abs tighten, taking you to another level.

When all seems lost, you find muscles you didn’t know you had to carry you

through the next mile. After all muscles - those you’ve met and those you

haven’t - have faded, your mind takes over.

A marathon is a mental challenge, about as difficult as they come. The mind

fills in the gaps that tired muscles and cramps leave. It’s a substitute,

something on which you can always rely if you begin to doubt your calf, your

hamstring.

But what if you doubted your entire body, even before the race started? How

strong would your mind have to be?

It’s impossible to quantify such an answer, but we do know this: at least as

strong as DeNicola’s.

DeNicola, 27, was a competitive dancer in Queens, N.Y. before she packed her

clothes, left her big family behind and turned the corner onto an unpaved

path called college.

The first three years at Mansfield College in Pennsylvania were good ones.

She was active on her small campus and a familiar face to most of those she

passed on her way to class.

In September of 1999, she was cruising through her workload and preparing

for interviews that would determine where she would complete her student

teaching during the spring semester.

Majoring in English education, she planned to teach middle and high school

students. She was moving quickly through life, as motivated college students

do, then something slowed her pace.

“I literally went to bed one day and I was fine,” said DeNicola. “Woke up

the next day and lost the use of the left side of my body, which is my

dominant side.”

For the next two months, DeNicola treated countless doctors as if they were

students, challenging them and testing their knowledge of the human body.

Most failed.

In November, after sitting in more waiting rooms than she cares to remember,

DeNicola was assured she was not crazy and that her symptoms were real.

Contrary to what other doctors had originally suspected, she did not have a

brain tumor or mononucleosis, and she had not had a stroke.

DeNicola found out she was the victim of genetic mutations, which had grown

from health problems in the family, and faced the challenge of battling

inflammatory arthritis.

She regained use of all of her extremities, and after finding a new drug

called Remicade in late spring of 2000, the pain subsided tremendously. She

calls it her “wonder drug.”

Remicade may not be effective forever, and there’s always the possibility of

long-term side effects. But before she found the drug, the pain was, not

metaphorically, almost unbearable.

“I don’t know if (Remicade’s) going to kill me,” she said. “And I don’t know

if it’s gonna make me worse. I don’t care. Right now it helps me, and that’s

all I care about. My pain was so bad that I contemplated suicide.”

But with the help of her

“wonder drug,” her mind overcame the pain, and after six months of living at

home - she had the credits to graduate from Mansfield in December of 1999 -

DeNicola was ready for the next challenge.

In June of 2000, on the suggestion of a college friend who taught at

Culpeper County High School, she moved to Culpeper. The following summer,

with her life progressing as normally as could be expected, she had a

full-body bone-density scan, and the results revealed that Remicade had

built back much of her bone density.

Based on the results, her rheumatologist Dr. Lawson made a joke he

never thought would be taken seriously.

“Dr. Lawson said, ‘This is awesome! You’re so healthy you could run a

marathon,’” recalls DeNicola. “(I said) ‘I couldn’t even dress myself last

year, I’m not doing that to my body! It’s pissed off enough as it is!’”

But after a little research and a hesitant go-ahead from Dr. Lawson,

DeNicola began her six-month training regimen, preparing her to walk the

2001 Honolulu Marathon.

DeNicola raised $4,500 for the Arthritis Foundation and had her trip to

Hawaii paid for in full. But the walking she had to do herself.

“The first couple of hours I was good,” she said of the marathon. “I had

learned enough in my training to be alright. About five hours into it, I

thought, ‘Oh God, I want to be at home’ … Between eight and nine (hours), I

really considered just stopping because they had taken away the water tables

and the mile markers, so I had no idea where I was.”

Along with a friend from Charlottesville she had met through the Arthritis

Foundation, DeNicola found another level, a fifth or sixth wind that kept

her going. But quitting wasn’t completely out of the question.

“We finally got to a point where we couldn’t go anymore,” she said. “The van

guy came around (to pick us up) and was like, ‘you’re 0.2 miles away.’ And I

was like, ‘Hell, we’re finishing, even if we have to pull each other over

the finish line.’”

There was no tape to bust through, no screaming fans, no clock to confirm

the time - between 10 and 11 hours - and no medals to commemorate the

achievement. The guy driving the van was the pair’s only witness.

She had completed a task worth bragging about for the rest of her life, but

that wasn’t enough. Eleven months later, DeNicola did it again.

This time she decided to rough it at the Bermuda Marathon, but,

unfortunately, the training did not go as smoothly the second time around.

DeNicola pinched a nerve in her neck six weeks before the marathon, and when

the pain came rushing back five miles in, she decided she’d call it quits …

at the 13.1 mark.

Her common sense and medical knowledge told her she couldn’t do the full

26.2 miles, but her determination and stubborn ways told her she couldn’t

quit before the halfway point, where she was greeted by fans, a clock and a

medal.

DeNicola still lives in Culpeper, working as a communications specialist at

Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation. She has not started training again,

but intends to add another marathon to her list of accomplishments. In her

mind, it’s not a question of why do that to yourself, it’s a question of why

not?

“There’s no telling when the medication is going to stop working,” DeNicola

said. “If I’m in a wheelchair in ten years, I want to know that I didn’t

squander my good health. I used it to the best of my ability and I have all

these great memories.

“In arthritis circles we joke that good health is wasted (exclusively) on

the healthy.”

But strong minds, as we now know, are not.

Tim Hogan can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 115 or thogan@....