Sickly

This is going to be a very, very long story

For the past 17 years, I have been battling a severe chronic illness called Crohn’s Disease (Wikipedia). I was diagnosed when I was quite young and it’s not been an easy journey. The Wikipedia page for Crohn’s Disease has some good information, and some not-so-good information. The very nature of the illness is that it is different for everyone. So, medical and encyclopedic sources have a difficult time distilling all of the information into only a few pages. Entire books have been written about Crohn’s and, even then, they do not cover every aspect of the illness.

If you don’t want to dig through the Wikipedia page, here are some highlights:

• Crohn’s Disease is one of two Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD), the other is Ulcerative Colitis. Both are immune-based illnesses of the digestive tract, but both affect the body in different ways. Crohn’s Disease can affect a person anywhere from their mouth, to their bum, whereas Ulcerative Colitis affects only the colon (large intestine).
• Symptoms for both disease are surprisingly varied. They can include: ulcers, inflammation, fistulas, abdominal cramping, and anemia. Crohn’s patients are also likely to get other immune-based inflammatory illnesses, such as arthritis.
• No, Inflammatory Bowel Disease is not the same as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Irritable Bowel Syndrome is surprisingly common, and is considered a “functional bowel disorder” because is it less severe than IBD. Some researchers believe that IBD may lead to IBD for some sufferers but (in my own opinion) more studies need to be done to link IBS to IBD.
• Diagnosing Crohn’s, or UC, is a bit complicated. Docs usually go for blood and stool samples first, and send them off to labs for analyzation. If the lab results are abnormal (common for a person who is going through a diagnostic process), then Docs order up either a barium x-ray of the intestines, or go straight to an endoscopy. When a Doc orders an Upper Endoscopy, that means that they are going to take pictures, and biopsies, of the patient’s upper digestive tract (esophagus, stomach, part of small intestine) and if they order a Colonoscopy, then the Docs are taking pictures, and biopsies, from the colon. Endoscopic results–both biopsies, and pictures–are usually the only way to confirm an IBD diagnosis.
• Treatment for Crohn’s Disease is even more varied than it’s symptoms. As with most diseases, there is a lot of pharmaceutical treatment (drugs), and IBD sufferers often make drastic diet, and lifestyle, changes in an effort to control their disease. Sadly, since the disease hits everyone differently, the same is also true of the treatments for it. Most IBD patients have to try many different forms of treatment before the find they ones that work well for them. The process takes years.
• The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America currently has a bill before Congress called the IBD Research Enhancement Act that aims to help people understand the seriousness of these illnesses. They are also working on having IBD recognized as a disabling illness.

As I keep saying, IBD is different in everyone, so writing down my story with IBD will take me days. It’s not easy to condense 18 years of testing and illness into a single blog page. So, for now, this page is a work in progress.