Thank you all for sticking with me this month as I have been recounting my early experiences with Crohn’s disease. It has actually been a little difficult for me to go back and relive those initial months of figuring out how to live with inflammatory bowel disease. I didn’t realize how much I had hidden away and never looked at since.
At the time, I didn’t need to know everything that was going on. My parents handled talking with the doctors and go over my treatments with hospital staff, so I never dwelled on the details. I was happy to leave those days in the past.
There is still a lot left to this story, but I want to give it a little time before moving on to the rest of my experience. I didn’t realize when I first started out just how much I had to say on the subject.
I also didn’t realize all of the emotions it would bring up in me. I remember what it felt like to be standing on the brink, to be starving to death even though I was still consuming food. There are so many other ways that IBD can take its toll: perforations through the intestine, sepsis, strictures (where the intestines narrow and won’t allow anything to pass though) and obstructions, complications from surgery, cancer.
And what’s so frustrating is that IBD is not always taken seriously. These are diseases that are not only painful and embarrassing, but often debilitating, definitely life changing, and even fatal. But there are many out there who just see it as a “bathroom issue,” on the same lines of a stomach bug. But those who live with it every day know it’s so much more.
I hope we all find the strength to become one voice fighting against inflammatory bowel disease.