Crohn's.... what it's like for me

This is probably gonna be spacey and all over the place but hey that's how my brain is these days :)


Crohn's Disease: an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It causes inflammation of the lining of your digestive tract, which can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea and even malnutrition. Inflammation caused by Crohn's disease can involve different areas of the digestive tract in different people. The inflammation caused by Crohn's disease often spreads deep into the layers of affected bowel tissue. Like ulcerative colitis, another common IBD, Crohn's disease can be both painful and debilitating, and sometimes may lead to life-threatening complications.



That's a lot to process, huh? Before I was diagnosed I wasn't entirely sure what Crohn's Disease was. I'd heard of it here and there but never paid much attention. I had other things to worry about, one being the rare bone syndrome I was born with. Little did I know I would one day have Crohn's, would fight daily for my mental AND physical health and eventually have life saving surgery resulting in an ileostomy(Stella).

Truth is nobody thinks they will ever get really sick, sick to the point you just might die and lord knows you want to from the pain...but when you do there are two choices:

Fight with everything you have or let the disease take over.

There are days I think about just letting it take over but I'm a fighter and there's a fire deep inside me that prevents me from totally giving in. I was born with it and it's really all I've ever known. Other days I have the mind set of "I've got this!"... I savor those days because they are few and far between. Mostly I'm somewhere in between wanting to giving up and thinking I've got this thing beat. I don't get out much, I panic when I'm out in public sometimes afraid my bag will leak. Driving used to relax me, not it makes me very nervous. A lot of my family thinks I'll "get better soon"... the ones who know what's really going on know I won't, but I keep trying!

Crohn's isn't a death sentence but it's no walk in the park either. Some days I want to scream and there are occasions when I actually do and boy does it feel good! I used to wonder why people thought I was strong, brave, could face anything... then I got Crohn's. Guess what?! I AM all those things and I believe it's because of everything I have faced in my 29 yrs on this planet.