When Mount Pearl Marlins competitive swimmer Aaron Coady didn’t make the Canada Games team last year, he knew there was something wrong.
Aaron was one of the top four swimmers in the province and was considered a shoe-in for the team.
“At first one of my coaches thought I had a nervous stomach,” the 15-year-old recalled from his home in Paradise.
“I felt fine for the first 100 metres of the race, but then the next 100 I just couldn’t move my arms anymore — I was so tired.”
His times were about 30 seconds slower than normal — too slow to make the cut for the competitive team.
“Once they said it was Crohn’s … It was a relief. I said, ‘We can manage Crohn’s, we can tolerate and we can work with Crohn’s.’ You know, you can live.”
Carolyn Coady, Aaron’s mother
Aaron had started feeling sick a few months beforehand and had bloodwork completed but the results came back normal.
“Still, he went from this healthy, big boy, to you could just see him starting to deteriorate,” said Aaron’s mother, Carolyn Coady. “His swimming and his social life — everything deteriorated.”
“I was losing weight,” said Aaron. “I was about maybe 110 pounds — I was really small, and I just didn’t want to do anything. I’d come home from swimming and just go to bed.”
“It was hard to watch,” said Carolyn, fighting back tears. “And everything runs through your head — you go through so much of, ‘What is it?’”
Doctors did more bloodwork and took stool samples. Aaron had an MRI, a CT scan, and a colonoscopy, and finally — the Coady family had an explanation.
“Once they said it was Crohn’s …” Carolyn exhaled and held her arms to her chest. “It was a relief. I said, ‘We can manage Crohn’s, we can tolerate and we can work with Crohn’s.’ You know, you can live.”
Uphill climb
While the family was relieved, Aaron still had an uphill climb to get where he is today.
Immediately after the Crohn’s diagnosis, he was put on a strict liquid-only diet. For eight weeks, he was not allowed to eat anything — he was allowed only a special kind of powdered shake.
“About two weeks in, I texted my mom while I was at school, and I said, ‘I can’t do it — I need to eat something.’ It’s not that I was hungry, it’s just that everyone around me was eating and I was just drinking a shake.”
“I begged him not to eat,” said Carolyn. “Just get through.”
The two-week mark is the hardest, but he stuck with it, and that drink paired with daily medication put Aaron in remission.
“It made me a better person,” said Aaron.
“When I realized that I had to go two months without eating anything, just the shake, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to do it. But then I got past the two weeks, and I realized I could do it. So, now I know I can do anything if I put my mind to it.
“And I hope people learn from me that you can do anything you put your mind to.”
Aaron’s positive outlook and determination has made him a role model for the 5,000 people in this province living with Crohn’s or colitis.
This year, he’s the honorary chair for the Eastern Avalon Gutsy Walk happening Sunday at St. Theresa’s Elementary School on Mundy Pond Road.
Aaron hopes people come out to support Crohn’s and Colitis Canada at the Gutsy Walk. The event raises funds to assist ongoing research and enhance treatments to improve the lives of people living with IBD.
Training a priority
Today, Aaron spends 24 hours a week swimming and training at the Summit Centre, and his coach Chris Roberts said he’s always impressed by the level of maturity and responsibility Aaron shows, adding the young swimmers look up to Aaron as a role model.
He said for a teenager to carefully follow the strict diet required to stay healthy with Crohn’s disease is something to be commended — Aaron is allowed very little sugar or greasy food and no whole wheat or peanuts.
Roberts said he’s especially proud of the young swimmer’s determination in the face of his illness.
“He struggled for a long time but always stuck with swimming despite feeling sick,” said Roberts.
In fact, Aaron only missed about a week and half of swimming through it all. Even when he was feeling too sick to swim, he would still show up and coach the younger children or help with timing.
Aaron said he also hopes other people with inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s and colitis know that it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
“At first when they said I had a bowel disease, I was like, ‘Argh, I’m always going to be sick,’ but now that I’ve went through what I went through I’m proud to have Crohn’s disease — it’s made me who I am today.”
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