Road to Ghana update

Hey everyone!

I've recently been getting more frequent questions about the upcoming World Scrabble Championship in Ghana - in particular, why haven't I made any new Road to Ghana episodes, and why is my name not on the roster of signups?

I haven't wanted to announce anything until I was 100% sure, but unfortunately, I'm now at the point where I can say definitively that I will not be attending this year's championship.

Travelers headed to many countries in South America and Africa, including Ghana, must get the yellow fever vaccine. Going into this process, I knew that this was going to present a bit of a snag, but I was confident that there would be a way forward - so confident that I launched a YouTube series chronicling my pathway to November's championship.

I would have gladly have simply gotten this (or any other) vaccine, but the yellow fever vaccine is what's known as a "live virus vaccine", unlike the flu or COVID-19 shots - the only type of vaccine I can't receive. Why can't I get live virus vaccines, you ask?

When I was 15 years old, I got very sick with digestive issues that were eventually discovered to be Crohn's disease. Crohn's is an autoimmune disease where the body attacks its own digestive tract. My health wasn't the best in the decade+ after my diagnosis, but about 12 years ago, when the usual methods of controlling my flareups weren't working, I started a medication called Remicade, a "biologic" which effectively and efficiently blocks the erroneous immune response. It's administered intravenously at regular intervals. I just sit there and either take a nap or study Scrabble words for a few hours, like so:

(Scrabble tiles on shirt, Scrabble dictionary just outside of frame)

Remicade has hugely improved my health and quality of life, to the point where nobody even knows that I have a chronic illness unless I tell them. However, it does put me in the class of immunosuppressed people who are forbidden to receive live virus vaccines, as the virus can easily become the full, uncontrolled illness.

If I could stop Remicade long enough to not be considered immunosuppressed, I could get the yellow fever vaccine safely and then resume treatment afterwards. Three months/12 weeks is often cited as the necessary time to halt things like Remicade for this purpose. Unfortunately, if I go even a week or two beyond my normal 6 week medicine interval, I start experiencing crippling fatigue and digestive issues. This isn't an option for me.

I had assumed that the obvious way forward was to get a vaccine waiver, where a doctor basically says, this guy can't get the vaccine but wants to travel anyway and assumes all risk. I figured the yellow fever vax requirement was a formality, as opposed to truly medically necessary, and a doctor would just check a box and I'd be on my way. However, appointments with my primary care doctor, then gastroenterologist, then travel clinic doctor, and finally an infectious disease specialist were consistent - all of them not only forbade me to get the yellow fever vaccine, as I had expected, but also strongly encouraged me not to get a waiver and not to go to Ghana without the vaccine, which I hadn't expected.

I decided that I didn't feel comfortable going against the combined advice of four medical professionals, so, sadly, I withdrew my name from the US team and will sit out this year's championship. It's definitely disappointing, as traveling to Africa to play Scrabble is on my bucket list and I've been training hard for the event this year, but as time has passed, I'm at peace with it. I can support the event from afar with live commentary or YouTube videos, and there will be other championships in the future to attend with fewer complications.

The announcement of Ghana as the 2025 World Championship site last year was the final push I needed to make this video about Scrabble in Nigeria and Africa more broadly. It's one of my favorite videos. While making it, I felt a deep sense of injustice that the best players from the African continent had routinely been denied the ability to travel to World Championships for reasons outside of their control. Now, I can say that I empathize somewhat with that experience, though of course my circumstances are very different.

As far as the "Road to Ghana" video series, I think what I'd like to do is to pivot from my own journey to the experiences of other top contenders: maybe talking to them about what they're doing to prepare for the big event, highlighting some of the exploits of those players over the past year, etc. It's still going to be a fantastic spectacle of Scrabble, and even though I won't be playing, I really want Scrabble fans of every stripe to get hyped for what will surely be an amazing event.

Anyway, there you have it. Not the happiest update, but we'll make the best of it. Thanks for reading!