Jenna Knoblauch last ran a marathon in 2019. Her goal was to finish and not walk, and she accomplished both. She plans to do the same in this year’s New York City Marathon while raising at least $8,000 for EndoFound with the help of her friend and running mate, Skye.
“Another goal I have is for more people to learn the word endometriosis by me telling my story,” Knoblauch said. “I want to plant that seed.”
Knoblauch and Skye, surgical trauma ICU nurses at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island, are two of Team EndoStrong’s 50 runners in the Nov. 3 race. This is EndoFound’s tenth year as a charity partner with the New York City Marathon, and it’s the second year in a row the foundation has been classified at the bronze level by New York Road Runners. The foundation’s goal is for all runners to raise $250,000 collectively.
Click Here To Support Jenna Knoblauch's Marathon Fundraiser
Knoblauch’s endometriosis journey began with pain and heavy periods when she was 14.
“I missed a lot of school,” she said. “I’d also faint on the first day of my period each month, and the period would last seven to eight days. I just thought that’s what all my friends were going through because we were always told that was normal for girls our age.”
Knoblauch would suffer for the next eight years without a diagnosis. In 2016, with the pain too much to bear, she went to the hospital one day, where doctors detected large ovarian cysts. During surgery to remove them, they also found significant endometriosis that was beyond their expertise to treat. Knoblauch went to an endometriosis specialist and had two excision surgeries. She felt relief for about a year before her period pain returned, along with severe pain in her bowels. She had a third excision surgery and a bowel resection in 2017.
“I spent five days in the hospital after that third surgery because I just wasn’t healing right,” Knoblauch said. “And then, five days after I got home, I fainted on my bathroom floor. I went to the hospital and was in full-blown septic shock. I would go in and out of the hospital for three months in 2017, with the longest consecutive time there being four weeks. I had chest tubes, an ileostomy bag, and was basically in multi-organ failure for being septic for so long.”
She had the ileostomy bag for about nine months before it was removed in 2018. That’s the last surgery she had.
“I still have symptoms. They’re not with every period and not as bad as when I was younger, but I know my body is trying to tell me something,” Knoblauch said. “I’m managing them the best I can, but I know I’ll have to address this again.”
She’s hoping to hold off until after she finishes school, where she’s working toward her master’s degree in health administration. She’s also focused on the marathon.
“My training has been going well,” she said. “I’ve been a runner my whole life, both track and cross country, and running has always helped me. I don’t feel symptoms when I run.”
More critical to Knoblauch than physically running the marathon is her reason for running it: to educate and bring awareness.
“I never heard the word endometriosis when I was young. When I found out I had it, it was very hard to conceptualize what it was—I thought I’d caused it,” Knoblauch said. “It took a long time for me to wrap my brain around it and understand what was physiologically happening to me.
“Several years ago, I returned to my high school to talk to all the girls about it,” Knoblauch continued. “I spoke to every single class two years in a row, and when I went back the second time, some of the girls told me they’d been diagnosed with endo after I told them about it the year before. All girls need to know what’s normal and what’s not. I was always in the dark at their age.”
To donate to Jenna Knoblauch’s cause, visit https://give.endofound.org/fundraiser/5473157.
