Katie is a teenage girl -- the most cheerful and inspiring person you could ever want to be around. Katie loves RENT and Sparky's musical, THE LAST SESSION. (Sparky is Steve Schalchlin who created the Bonus Round site.)

What's remarkable about Katie is that she brings joy to everyone who knows her while living with the pain of a chronic illness -- ulcerative colitis. She has been to the edge of despair and back so many times, it's almost routine.

Sparky invited her to write about the tough stuff -- the dark places. The stuff she usually tries to hide. Then he asked Katie if he could share. She said okay, as long as the reader understands that she doesn't usually whine this much.

Just kidding. Not really.

*Note: I know I haven't responded to even a quarter of the email I get. I'm incredibly sorry--I set up a new POP3 account and I promise to reply to every email I receive, so please, if you sent me an email before, send it again and I will reply. AOL has the tendency to delete my mail so any mail I saved to reply to at later time was lost, so please, send it again to: katie@bonusround.com. Thank you all so much.