Our shoes pound the ground as my fiancee, Katherine Lancaster, looks over to me smiling, proudly. I’m lucky to be alive to experience this moment as we cross the starting line.

Eighteen months ago, she was helping me into a wheelchair in an urgent care clinic. Intense pain was shooting through my stomach as we awaited for an ambulance to take me to St. Clair Hospital.

The next day I awoke from a five-hour emergency surgery missing 1½ feet of my small intestine. I was left with 34 staples Frankensteining my stomach and an ileostomy bag hanging off of the scars. I realized how close to the end I had been.

Facing the serious diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, I would never have thought I would be running the Pittsburgh 10-miler with Katherine 18 months later on Nov. 9. Making it to the race was one challenge, finishing would be another.

Katherine and I had no clue I had Crohn’s disease, which affects 1.4 million Americans. According to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America there is still little knowledge on the precise causes of the disease but primary factors involve the immune system, genetics and the environment.

Crohn’s is a form of inflammatory bowel disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue in the body, causing inflammation and, in my case, severe damage. Surgeons removed my damaged tissue, but Crohn’s will never go away. Often, the goal of treatment is to achieve remission.

The disease attacked my small intestine, essentially corroding it until, eventually, it perforated, causing the sharp burst of pain I felt while baking a pizza and watching a movie on May 21, 2013.

My mother, Laura McKelvey, was at an auto-body shop in North Carolina near her home after a small fender-bender when Katherine called her. She got on the first plane.

“I was crushed,” she told me. “I'm sitting there in my seat next to a 30-year-old businessman crying my eyes out because I couldn't get to you.”

All I can remember when I spoke to her over the phone was that I was ready for the surgery -- anything to stop the crippling pain.

After the surgery, it took some time for me to comprehend the issues involving the ileostomy bag. Surgeons had created an opening in my abdominal wall, bringing through the lowest part of my small intestine. Digestive contents would now pass through this opening -- or stoma -- into the bag for the next three to six months while I healed.

Fortunately in my case, the ileostomy was temporary; in many cases it’s permanent. According to CCFA, approximately 75 percent of patients with Crohn’s will need a similar surgery at some point in their lives.

“Hey, at least they saved your belly button!” my family joked.

As I recovered in the hospital, I struggled to walk. Each step was excruciating, my lungs heaved as I clung to the I.V. stand. Katherine and my mother encouraged me to walk as often as possible.

I underwent a multitude of tests, screening for infection. Through that process they discovered numerous pockets of fluid residing in my abdomen due to the 40 liters of saline solution used during the surgery to purge my body of leaked stool.

When I entered the hospital I weighed 160 pounds. Fifteen days later I weighed 124 pounds with a ileostomy bag and a hemovac catheter to pump out the residual fluid.

Katherine took care of me in the early transition of being home. “I think it rocked your confidence,” she said.

Dealing with the ileosomy was one of the biggest challenges: I experienced bag leaks, malnutrition, discomfort and a slew of other inconveniences. I also was extremely weak because my muscles and lungs had atrophied. I was bedridden and bored.

Two weeks after I came home, I accompanied Katherine and her brother to the Three Rivers Arts Festival. I was so weak I lay in the grass, eventually needing Katherine to help carry me back to the car. To this day, Katherine has never let me forget that she carried me more than a mile from Point State Park and up the Boulevard of The Allies. I thought life would never be the same.

Shortly afterward I traveled to Michigan to visit my grandparents. Their goal was to fatten me up with copious amounts of carbs, protein and fat. My goal was to build my endurance.

During that trip I also ran my first 100 yards.

Then 100 yards turned into a quarter mile. A quarter turned into a half mile. Eventually I was running two miles and living healthily. I slowly gained weight. The pain subsided. Life became normal, but running 10 miles was the furthest thought from my mind.

In late December my surgeon cleared me for the ileostomy reversal. During the surgery in early February, in which doctors reconnected my small intestine with the large intestine, they saw nothing to suggest that Crohn’s had reappeared.

I started running again -- going out slow. I tried to just make it around the small neighborhood loop. In July Katherine and I moved to Coraopolis, only a half mile from the Montour Trail.

The third day living there, I decided to try it out. The air was warm and fresh, people waved as I ran by. I ran two miles that first day and I was addicted. The next day I ran four, and I was in heaps of pain.

One morning after running a weekly mileage of 26, dead tired and damn proud of it, I signed up for the EQT 10 miler on a whim.

Katherine and I ran the race together. We were strong during the first few miles, keeping with the pack and the pace leader. My struggle began during mile three as we ran through the North Side. “Keep going, we set the pace,” she would remind me.

On mile six, as we were running through the Strip District, our legs and feet began to ache. “Keep going, don’t stop,” we told ourselves.

Mile 9 we were on Liberty Avenue. Katherine looked over at me, “Do this for all that has happened, finish this because you are strong.” I looked over to her, out of breath and dead tired: “I’m doing this for us.”

We clocked in at the finish line at 1:33:20, placing 2,054 overall. After 18 months, two surgeries, more than 200 miles of training, one pair of well-worn Brooks and a wonderful partner to push me over the finish line, it was finally over.

Today, I still have Crohn’s disease but I am healthier than I have ever been. Now I am training for the Pittsburgh Half-Marathon, to be held in May, with my favorite person.

Carey McKelvey, 26, is a graduate student at Point Park University.

First Published: December 2, 2014, 5:00 a.m.