With a few friends, a Fort Smith nurse walks for a Crohn’s cure

In 1989, a 17-year-old came home early from her prom and took a trip to the hospital the next day. She would spend the next month learning how to live with Crohn’s disease.

Now a public health nurse in Fort Smith, Melanie Kearley has adapted in the decades since.

Even so, she recognizes the disease – which makes the body attack itself, causing inflammation in the gut lining and a host of related conditions – isn’t one people are often comfortable discussing.

“It’s still one of those diseases where it’s not talked about a lot. Lots of people don’t want to talk about it, and that’s understandable,” Kearley said this week.

Back in 1989, with no internet but a range of pamphlets and booklets from the hospital, Kearley found the news of her condition acutely embarrassing.

Crohn’s causes abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and an inability to absorb various nutrients. For Kearley, living with the condition means doing everything from taking regular supplements through to routinely visiting an Edmonton gastroenterologist. She injects herself with a biologic every eight weeks.

Now, she says, she feels fortunate.

“Even though I have this disease, I haven’t had any surgeries,” she said, though she has had “lots of different medications and lots of ups and downs throughout my life.”

Before and after her two pregnancies, for example, the condition would flare up.

“It’s just difficult that way, when you’re very, very tired and going to a washroom 20 times a day – with small children, it just made it very challenging,” she said.

“But you learn to live with it.”

For years, Kearley had been aware of the Gutsy Walk – an annual fundraising walk for Crohn’s and Colitis Canada, a charity that describes itself as “focused on finding the cures for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.”

There’s no organized Gutsy Walk in the Northwest Territories, and for a long time Kearley found herself too busy to figure out a means of participating – until last year.

She had planned to register on the Gutsy Walk’s website as an individual and then simply strike out alone for a walk around Fort Smith. Instead, a group of friends joined in to support her.

This year, when she walks on Sunday, she knows at least two friends will be along for that symbolic journey – and possibly more.

“I’d love for there to be something more organized in the territory, I think it would be really good, but we can still do our own little thing to make people more aware of Crohn’s and colitis,” she said.

“I want to contribute to the foundation in hopes that they can find us a cure for Crohn’s and colitis one day … We have over 300,000 Canadians living with Crohn’s and colitis, so I think it’s important.”

Walks are taking place across Canada on Sunday. The charity, which is in its 50th year, says it hopes to raise more than $3 million to support its work.

You can donate to Kearley’s walk on this page.