When Cody Ramsey was struck down with ulcerative colitis, the initial prognosis was not positive.

“The first doctor sat me on the bed and said, ‘Look, your footy career is over’,” Ramsey recalls.

“I looked at Dad and we both laughed. I was like, ‘Who are you to tell me that?’”

Ulcerative colitis is no laughing matter. A bowel disease that causes inflammation of the digestive tract, it can be not only debilitating but also potentially life-threatening.

Ramsey first realised something wasn’t quite right when, during a pre-season run in preparation for the 2023 campaign, he found himself at the back rather than the front of the pack. When the St George Illawarra fullback began passing blood on the toilet, he knew it was serious.

Yet, the worst was to come.

When he was first taken to hospital, Ramsey weighed 90 kilograms. Within the space of seven weeks he dropped to just 62kg.

The pain he endured during that time – a stoma (an opening in the abdomen) was required because the bowel was poised to perforate – was excruciating.

“I had ketamine going into my leg,” he says. “I had the oxycodone button just to get me out of the pain. I had the surgery after that, and then they had to let my stomach rest.

“I had all the scar tissue and what-not, and then it was just a stoma for six months.

“It was pretty crazy to go to the toilet with just a stoma – like I never even knew what one was like.

“I couldn’t even look down. It’s just like a different feeling. My partner had to change everything for a while there. She did God’s work for the whole situation.”

There were half-a-dozen major surgeries, as well as several follow-up procedures. For seven months, Ramsey was restricted to his hospital bed. Unable to digest foods, on one occasion he tried to take himself to the bathroom and was so weak that he collapsed unconscious.

“It was so never-ending,” he says. “There were times where I was so close to sepsis, and obviously with sepsis, you get put in an induced coma.

‘With so many surgeries, one thing goes wrong and I’m burnt bread [dead].’

Cody Ramsey

“And then, after I had a surgery, I had my old stoma closed up, and then I had faeces coming out of my stomach. Then it gets scary because if it’s coming out that hole, and if it seeps into my bloodstream, then there’s obviously a possibility that you’re gonna die. I nearly had that three times.

“With so many surgeries, one thing goes wrong and I’m burnt bread [dead].”

Even at his lowest point, “Rambo” never gave up on his dream of returning to the NRL. With just one sentence, specialist surgeon Jonathan Hong put his mind at ease.

“He said, ‘Just take it easy on the Tigers when you come back,’” Ramsey says with a grin.

The road to recovery has been long. Ramsey recently marked a significant milestone when he reached 78kg, his playing weight when he made his first-grade debut in 2020.

It’s an achievement made possible by the support of the medicos, the Dragons and Ramsey’s family, particularly fiancee Tahlia. The latter kept a bedside vigil for the entire seven months that Ramsey was on his back, at a time when she was pregnant. The fact they were able to welcome daughter Mia into the world, who is now 11 months old, is a miracle in itself, given the concerns that Ramsey’s condition had the potential to prevent him from having children.

“I’m just laying there, and then she’s getting bigger and bigger through the pregnancy,” says Ramsey, who will become a father for the second time in February.

“One time I would throw up, and she’d throw up. It was rough for a while, but she never complained.”

When Ramsey had j-pouch surgery – the operation removes the large bowel and the end of the small intestine is used to form an internal pouch – he was going to the toilet 40 times a day. Now, with a controlled diet and fluid intake, his bodily functions are back to normal.

There has been a graduated approach to exercise that has allowed him to return to training with his Dragons teammates. When this masthead watched an opposed session during the week, Ramsey was the fullback for the “B team”.

“You would have seen it out there today; they were kicking the ball to me and they were trying to smash me,” he says with a grin.

It’s another small but important step that has convinced Ramsey that his NRL days aren’t over.

“This club, they know from when I was walking around with a bag, I would just walk around and say that I’d come back,” he says.

“Everyone here knows that I’m gonna do it. I couldn’t have had more support from this club; there’s nothing more they could have done. The Dragons are like my family now.”

When Ramsey burst onto the NRL scene, he was crippled by anxiety. On game days, he would work himself up into such a state that he couldn’t eat, resulting in him being fuelled for night matches with just “500 grams of caffeine”.

“But by the time it came to the game, I would be physically yawning,” he says. “I’d be tired because I feel as though I’ve just worked myself up throughout the day so much about the game and be genuinely tired.

“Then once the game’s over, it’s a sort of blank, and I’m [thinking]: ‘Why was I so anxious and feeling those things?’ I feel it’s different this time around.

“What is worse out there on that field than what I’ve been through in the past two years?

“I can’t really imagine there’s worse things out there.”

At some point, when his body has fully recovered from its ordeal, Ramsey is adamant he will return to the NRL. The 24-year-old believes that day could come as soon as next season. Should that transpire, it will be one of the most inspirational comeback stories the game has seen.

For Ramsey, playing at the highest level again is his way of acknowledging family, friends and the Dragons for their support during the darkest days.

“If this happens to an average person, within a month you might be homeless,” he says.

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“There’s a lot of people out there that won’t be able to get the surgery because they can’t afford it. The Dragons put me in a position to not worry about financially supporting my family … I had time to recover, reset.

“I’ve had so many messages from kids that have had this happen to them. And I’m in a position now where we’re like, Cody Ramsey’s got the same condition as you, but he’s medically retired, or he’s given up.

“That’s not the Cody Ramsey I want to be. I want to be the first person in the NRL who has played with a small bowel. It’s not gonna stop you. If you see that as a kid, you go, ‘Far out, I can do it’.

“Just because you have something medically wrong with you, or you’ve been through a rough time, [you can still achieve your dreams].

“I don’t wanna play victim. I just wanna get on with life.”