Niko Kivelä fell ill with IBD

Niko Kivelä’s previous years have been full of changes.

There’s a hum in the big air closet.

Niko Kivelä enters through the sliding doors into the big lobby of Meilahti Triangular Hospital on Christmas 2020.

You can sense it, even smell it. There are sick people here.

Some of them get better, go home. Others don’t.

– I don’t belong here, I don’t want to be here, Kivelä thinks.

There is no other option. After registration, the nurses take Kivelä to floor number 14 in the elevator.

Breakthrough season and setback

Kivelä’s career took off in the 2018–2019 season with the Pelicans.

Ville Nieminen and Pasi Nurminen piloted by the bagpipes, they played in the top register throughout the season, and Kivelä knocked on the gates of a breakthrough when he scored 12 goals in the regular season.

– The young boy had a sense of wonder in a good way. The level of demand was extremely tough, the players were kept under very strict discipline. Nothing was overlooked.

A strong season was visible, as many players moved on with good contracts in their careers. Kivelä’s journey continued to Pori and Ässi for the next season.

However, the season turned out to be a dud.

Kivelä was in severe pain every day. He couldn’t move, let alone sit properly.

The only pain-free moment was when he lay still. Normal life became nothing at all.

Finally, a bulging disc was found on the back.

– I don’t wish it on anyone, to have to suffer every single second of the day. Even if it is the worst enemy.

– For a really long time, we thought about whether to cut or not.

Kivelä himself said that the back has to be cut. There were only 17 matches.

– When you woke up from the operating table and got up and didn’t feel that pain – just kidding, it was like winning the lottery. Feels like an operation, but there was no sick pain. It was a great feeling.

What the hell is that?

The next season started better, but already in the beginning Kivelä started to worry.

– What came out of the body was not normal at all.

He talked about it with Ässie’s top defender Jyri Marttinen, who urged Kivelä to immediately go to the team’s doctor. Marttinen threatened to go and say it himself if Kivelä didn’t do it.

Kivelä said he would go after the match.

– Jyri, as a father figure, immediately went to tell the team doctor that you should examine that guy, he hasn’t been to the toilet normally for a month and for the last two weeks there has been nothing but blood.

The doctor did the work as ordered.

Kivelä was spotted the next day. The discovery changed his whole life.

The diagnosis was ulcerative colitis, or IBD.

– The colon was completely inflamed.

Kivelä moved to Ässi with great expectations, but health concerns watered down the seasons. Elmeri Elo / AOP

A career at stake

Kivelä was immediately taken to the bed ward.

The blood values ​​had completely collapsed, the inflammation values ​​were at an all-time high. Medicines were started to be pumped into the attacker.

However, nothing seemed to work. The values ​​did not go in the right direction.

– It was really frustrating and difficult. I’m wondering why this doesn’t work for me, but it does for others. Then came the new medicines again and thought that these must be working now, but they didn’t work either.

– Every day I felt like I was walking in a fog, I didn’t know which way to go.

The situation got so bad that the doctors started planning to put a stoma bag in Kivelä’s side.

– I thought I wouldn’t play with it. I didn’t really have time to think about hockey, but that’s when it hit me in the face, is this the end of playing hockey.

In the end, however, the right medicine was found that worked. It was a biologic drug.

Kivelä’s values ​​went in a good direction, the stoma bag was not placed. Kivelä got out of the hospital after a few weeks of bed ward time.

Although the treatment period was heavy and the situation serious, he was relieved when he finally found the cause of the symptoms and got help.

– I trust the Finnish treatment system so much that it was a positive feeling – these people do everything for the patients. I didn’t want to end up in the bed ward, but when they said it was the only way and when that help is offered, you have to take it.

– It (diagnosis) was not received with joy, but when the situation was so severe, I was relieved in a certain way.

Kivelä’s weight dropped as much as 11 kilos. During the season, he was 90 kilos, but when Kivelä jumped on the scale in Meilahti, the reading showed only 79 kilos.

– Yes, there was a sad case looking in the mirror when you looked there. It only helped to believe and hope that this would be the case.

However, another setback was already waiting around the corner.

Can not be true

This is where it starts again, Kivelä thought when he got out of the bed ward.

Now you can build your fitness to what it once was. Maybe you can put on the skates again one day. The haze had disappeared around, the medicine worked.

It was the other way around.

It didn’t take many days when Kivelä had to walk through the familiar Meilahti locker room to register again. And back to the department.

– I was really angry.

The haze was back. Some kind of inflammation struck the stone, and again he didn’t know what was to come.

This time, luckily, the time in the department only lasted a few days.

Return

After the ward trips, Kivelä was able to live a relatively normal life, play and train.

It didn’t take long when Ässia was plagued by injuries and illnesses.

– The coach at the time (Ari-Pekka Selin) asked if I could play. I said I have the doctors clearance to train full time, but am I in the shape I once was, not really.

Selin still included Kivelä in the lineup. The striker immediately scored.

It was the reward after all the adversity. The feeling after the game in the booth was priceless.

– Even now I get chills when I think about that situation. Got the opportunity to do what he had been able to do since he was a child. Money can’t buy that.

Due to the weight loss, the wardrobe was renewed.

– I saved old clothes, but I had to get new ones that fit. I was like a dry summer squirrel, a bone fiddle.

Kivelä is known as a power forward in his career. ELMERI ELO / AOP

Via Keuru to Espoo

It took some time before Kivelä’s blood values ​​rose to the level they should be.

For the last season, he moved to the ranks of Tranås, who play at the third highest league level in Sweden. It was a trial period, when Kivelä saw if his body could withstand the training required by the sport.

Kivelä started training as always.

– At first I thought, oh my God, how far I am. It also brought motivation, when before I had been able to do this (exercise), even if I was in jeans and woken up in the middle of the night.

For this season, Kivelä moved to the ranks of KeuPa HT, but will finish the season in Kiekko-Espoo.

The season has been like a rollercoaster, as a good period in the early season was followed by a torn collateral ligament in the knee.

Kivelä has medication for the rest of his life due to IBD. He takes a chemotherapy-like drug once a day. In addition, he injects a biological medicine with a Remsima pen every 10 days.

Kivelä immediately received peer support for her illness in the bed ward, because a woman of the same age who also had IBD was in her room for the day. With him, Kivelä was able to share his experiences of the disease.

Also Jesse Saarinen mixed Teemu Ramstedt have been a great support to Kivela. Both have spoken publicly openly about IBD.

Kivelä has learned to appreciate small things and to live only in this moment. When he was younger, he thought about how well he wanted to play in the SM league, but nowadays it’s pointless to think about it any more.

– You can’t stop dreaming, but the biggest lesson is that there’s no point in letting thoughts wander where they shouldn’t be yet.

Niko Kivelä started this season in the ranks of KeuPa HT, but last week moved to Kiekko-Espoo for the rest of the season. The picture was taken a few weeks ago from the Keuruu ice rink. Otto Leinonen

ttn-50