Washougal man pushes through pain, illness to create works of art

Jon Cody Robertson doesn’t put limits on his ability to creatively express himself.

The Washougal painter, illustrator, digital artist, photographer, graphic designer and musician believes that his multitude of talents complement each other in beautiful and mysterious ways.

“I’ve tried to learn as much as possible over the years about all kinds of mediums,” he said. “I follow my curiosity wherever it goes, and it goes everywhere, I guess. I tend to get bored with what I’m making, so moving from medium to medium is my way of dealing with my attention deficit disorder. I often try to break the barriers between all the mediums. I try to follow my inspiration in the moment not to let anything get in the way, I guess.”

Robertson certainly hasn’t allowed his health to get in the way of his artistic pursuits. He has lived with several auto-immune disorders, including Crohn’s Disease, for the past 11 years.

“It’s been very challenging. (My health issues have) disrupted every aspect of my life,” Robertson said. “It’s hard for me to get anything done. It’s hard for me to make any kind of plans without knowing how I feel. I try my best to not let it affect my plans in that I try not to plan ahead, because I can’t. It’s a miracle that I’ve even been able to continue my art thing through it all.”

Robertson grew up in Washougal and moved to Concord, California, when he was in the eighth grade.

“Even when he’s at the hospital, he’s so kind and generous, even when people are being awful to him. I don’t know how he keeps it up,” she said. “(His issues have) been tough to deal with, but when he gets up in the morning and walks out of his room smiling, we know it’s going to be a good day because he’s already started on his art or is about to.”

‘The only thing I know is that I wake up in an ambulance’

In order to make his artistic dreams come true, however, Cody has had to overcome a series of significant health issues.

He was first diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which progressed into Crohn’s disease, as a high-school junior in 2009.

“I was at a theme park, and I was hit with a wave of major nausea and diarrhea,” he said. “At first I thought it was food poisoning, and would last only a couple of days. But when I got back home, it never stopped. It got worse and worse, actually. On top of that, I started getting horrible back pain, and also acid reflux.”

He started taking medication, which limited his symptoms and kept him relatively healthy for about one year. But then the issues “came back with full force.”

“My doctor at the time said that I needed to get surgery, and if I didn’t I was going to get cancer,” he said. “They ended up doing fundoplication on my esophagus to stop the acid reflux. The surgery caused so many issues and made things so much worse in so many different ways. I ended up getting the surgery redone a couple times through the years. Now it’s completely undone again, but I decided not to do anything about it because at this point, I think another surgery would make things worse.”

Cody also has Levator Ani Syndrome, a muscular disorder that causes rectal pain. And he suffers from abdominal migraines, which can cause pain, nausea, cramps and vomiting.

“They come on during a bowel movement,” he said. “The only thing that helps me is to be in the dark for a few hours. Sometimes I’ll take a shower with an ice pack on my head to try to confuse my senses and somehow break the cycle. I’ve learned a whole lot of breathing techniques, so I do anything and everything I can to mediate through it.

“Sometimes the flare-ups get so bad that I can’t get any meds down and I can’t stop vomiting. I get so dehydrated that I end up passing out. I’ve had seizures. My parents say that when I go into these bouts, sometimes I don’t make sense and that I’m totally out of it. I don’t remember a lot of it when I go through it. The only thing I know is that I wake up in an ambulance.”

Tracy said her son’s “episodes are terrifying to see.”

“They overwhelm his whole body, and he just shuts down,” she said. “It’s heart-wrenching. And a lot of the time, when he goes to the hospital, they tell him that they can’t help him, and he can’t understand why. It’s hard.”

Cody has been especially careful since the outbreak of COVID-19 earlier this year. He rarely goes outside his home, and is rigidly vigilant about washing his hands and wearing a mask, even indoors.

“My doctor said that I’m 30 percent more at risk (to get COVID-19), he said. “I have to be extra, extra careful.”

But he doesn’t have nearly as much control during his periodic hospital visits, which have become more terrifying than usual.

“It’s awful,” he said. “It’s really scary when I have to go to the emergency room and I’m surrounded by people who have COVID-19. I hear them coughing, and I can’t wear a mask because I’m vomiting. I’m so blessed and lucky I haven’t caught (the virus). I don’t know how I haven’t. It’s a miracle.”