Writing this blog creates a dichotomy of feelings. Its therapeutic to think back and express the emotions I was feeling during my past and at the same time very difficult to re-live the different times of my life. I can only hope that people dealing with these same issues today can be somehow helped by these words.
So, as I was in the car about to be taken home from the aforementioned party, watching all of my friends making out and having a great time, I didn't know at that very moment that "time" would begin standing still for me as it continued to move forward for everyone around me.
In time, the stomach flu I had gotten at the party went away, however, I just never felt quite right. I had always been a very active kid, always playing some sport after school until it got dark and in the summer, all day, every day. In the summer of 1969, I just didn't feel like doing anything. I didn't have any energy and when I did get outside to play (baseball was always my favorite) I had lost quite a bit of speed and overall ability. I can remember my dad and older brother kidding me about slowing down, telling me to "get the refrigerator off my back" and constantly prodding me to get outside to play more. I had no appetite, constantly had pain in my stomach and ran to the bathroom quite frequently. Towards the end of the summer, my parents took me to the family doctor who diagnosed me with a "nervous stomach" and prescribed some sort of tranquilizer. When nothing changed, in January of 1970, finally, I went to a gastroenterologist. A series of tests were done and I was diagnosed with Crohns disease.
The next 4 years of my life (high school) were really miserable. As I stated above, time stood still for me while it moved forward for everyone else. This was because Crohns robbed me of the ability to absorb any of the nutrition in whatever I ate and because of this, puberty completely stopped. I can remember sitting in my doctors office around the age of 16 and he started asking me questions about dating and general questions about sex. If he had asked me what any Yankee's batting average was, I could have told him the answer in 2 seconds. When I really could not even talk about dating or sex he knew it was something that was very difficult for me to speak about, so he called my parents into his office. He explained to them how important it is to stimulate the mind and how the mind can sometimes overcome the bodies physical inability to mature. My mom actually yelled at him and told him how ridiculous that was and "besides it wasn't an important thing for Neal to be concerned with, he just needs to get better".
I am certain there are many things buried in my subconscious, however, consciously, I remember very little about my 4 years in high school. After I graduated, I started at Rutgers in the Fall. The Crohns symptoms would come and go, however, when they came back, it was always worse than it had been. A couple of weeks after I started college, it came out of remission and the pain was unbearable. I had a series of x-rays done and it showed a perforation in my intestines. Four weeks after I began college, I had to leave to have surgery.
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