EPTThis is long and long overdue and I'm sorry. I just couldn't bring myself to write it out.
Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be really good at something and be someone in one, games were my life back then. I tried a few COD teams but they didn't really go anywhere. Around my last year in high school I was extremely sick to the point they almost didn't let me pass. I was bedridden-ed for about a year with no diagnosis. It happened to be about the same time Starcraft came out. I was able to play it, even if it was from my bed and I enjoyed the hell out of it. It was the best game I had ever played! Your mind can't wander for a single moment or 30 minutes could be lost for nothing. Definitely frustrating at times but undeniably an awesome mechanic.
I still remember six years ago fighting for blizzards top 200, and being picked up by inflow, root, complexity, and finally root. The stream battles, (my undeniably favorite rivalry was vs idra....the way the streams/reddit blew up whenever we had a match).
I don't want to make this too much about crohn's but it's a huge part of my life, and was a huge part of this even happening so I do have to bring it up some. To be bedridden-ed at 20 and not knowing why was a terrible feeling, it took them about a year to diagnose it....and then nothing worked. I was allergic to 2 of the meds they tried, and recieved a placebo for a clinical trial, and the other 3 had no effect.
The only thing that got me day to day was you guys. You were what I had to look forward to each day, if I needed some emotional support you guys were always there, wanted to just crush nerds on ladder? You were there again cheering me on.
These were the hardest years of my life. My GI says I have one of the worst cases he has seen and it sucked to perform so poorly at events. But I can honestly say I'm surprised I was even able to make it to the lan. I wouldn't do anything differently though, I got to meet my best friends there.
Then 2014 hit, I needed emergency resection, things went bad and I was in the hospital a month, and left to recover at home for 2-3 months. Bills were pilling up and up and I couldn't keep up. One guy read my posts in /r/depression about it and did something I'll never forget and set up a fundraiser for it. The amount of support I received was mind blowing. I'm actually crying just thinking about it. It felt like no matter how bad things got, I had you guys on my side.
I have to say winning the 15k foreigner tournament was one of the best feelings of my life. I know it wasn't the biggest win, but it meant a lot to me.
Let's fast forward to now. I'm currently on a very new drug called Stelara and it just got approved for crohns about 6 months ago and I'm starting to feel great. I really have high hopes on this one, it's helped more than all the other ones combined....not a single hospital stay in 3 months!
I do want to apologize for something that has been bothering me a while. I started/stopped streaming multiple times.....multiple multiple times...and I just want you guys to know it wasn't on purpose. Crohns sucks and hits randomly and lasts for weeks when you do get a flare, throw in some depression on top of that and well......I'm not trying to make excuses for it, I just want you guys to know what happened.
School is going great now as well, one more class for my associates, then I will be going to UNC for my bachelors in computer programming.
I do plan on doing some fun streams of different games now and again to keep in touch with some of my followers (not sure how often since I'm pretty busy now), but obviously my starcraft career has been/is over. But I wanted to get some closure from the people who got me through so many hard times.
I'd give shout outs but there is too many to name and I'd forget someone.
Thanks for everything,
Chad Minigun Jones
