My Story

I was officially diagnosed with Crohn's in 2006 at 18 years young. I wish I could say that is where my medical problems began, but I encountered many difficulties from the day I was born. I was born with a staph infection of the umbilicis which posed an imminent threat and almost took my life. The doctor took action by giving me antibiotics, which not only caused an allergic reaction but allowed me to catch a dangerous toxin by the name of clostridium difficile, otherwise known as Cdif. This toxin causes severe diarrhea and can even cause intestinal disease. After much time in the hospital I did recover but was not left unscathed.  

I spent most of my childhood in and out of the hospital. By the time I was eight, I learned I had four ulcers and was lactose intolerant. Things quieted down for many years after that and I lived in a fairly healthy state. Everything was going quite well for me until I graduated from high school, where my life took a turn for the worst. First, I began experiencing excruciating abdominal pain after eating a meal.  As time progressed, the stomach pain would intensify and last for hours at a time. It got to the point where even if I took a sip of water, my stomach writhed in pain.  I was unable to keep any food down as my constant trips to the restroom were wearing me out quickly. My rectum was so sore from the chronic diarrhea, that it would spasm uncontrollably. By the time I was hospitalized, I went from 118lbs to 90lbs in one month.

That hospitalization marked a crucial time in my life, because it truly was the most difficult ordeal I had ever encountered.  As the doctor began explaining my diagnosis, the only words that stuck in my mind were "NO CURE." 

In the years that followed I was hospitalized too many times to count.  I tried many medications which caused allergic reactions, the worst being Remicade which caused me to go into anaphylactic shock.  When I moved from the East Coast to Texas in 2008, my system was thrown into overdrive as I progressively got worse.  In October of 2009 I was hospitalized again, this time with an urgency to remove my intestines.  The dilemma with this was, my disease was too widespread throughout both my small and large intestines to hoan in on just one area to remove.  With Crohn's as opposed to Colitis, just because you get surgery does not mean the disease is eradicated.  After being transferred to another hospital I found an amazing doctor who helped immensely.  I was put on a cocktail of Cimzia and Methotrexate injections that kept me hospital free for about a year and a half, and it was pure bliss. The one medication I was constantly put on from the beginning was Prednisone.  The side effects of Prednisone are awful; my least favorite one is the moon face.  My cheeks looked loaded with helium and I could not bare the sight of myself.  But even worse than that, were the side effects this drug was causing that I could not see. 

For two years my knees blew up to the size of watermelons and were extremely painful to walk on.  My right knee was drained five times and my left knee was drained twice!  They would pop, lock up, and give out.  The staircase began to resemble Everest, as each step I took was arduous and taxing.  Even driving was becoming dangerous as my unpredictable knees kept playing tricks on me.  I soon learned at the age of 24, I developed osteonecrosis of both knees and needed a double knee replacement.  The general consensus to the cause of this: EVIL PREDNISONE.

Soon after this discovery, my life came to a complete STOP.  Not only were my knees useless but my disease was the worst it had ever been.  I would be sitting on the toilet having diarrhea and throwing up in a bag simultaneously twenty times a day (sorry for the visual, but it's the truth).  I was down to 80 lbs and I felt like a rag doll that was about to break in half.  My sisters had to bathe and dress me as I struggled to even breathe, my heart rate reaching beats of up to 140/minute.  My mom booked a flight to Minnesota and we were off to the Mayo Clinic.  They inserted a central venous catheter called a Hickman line through my jugular vein to go home with.  This is used for total parenteral nutrition (TPN), which is basically an insertion for nutrition to flow through.  It helps supply your daily nutritional values for the times when you cannot eat or gain weight.  After 8 weeks of hell in the hospital, I left with a new drug that held promise as I finally started feeling better for the first time in two years.

Unfortunately, two days after my release, my back went out and I suffered a series of continuous muscle spasms.  For two weeks straight, I was stuck on a bench in my room because every movement I made would cause my spine to spasm.  My entire body tightened up with insane pain and I was unable to move at all, as it sent what felt like an electric shock throughout my spinal column.  I headed back to the hospital to discover I had three spinal compression fractures.  I had developed osteoporosis, compliments again to Prednisone.  My inactivity from being in bed sick for over a year took an immense toll on my bones and muscles as well. 

Everything came to a head in September of 2013, when my body could no longer handle my deteriorating and diseased colon.  I was losing weight more rapidly than ever before, while my strength had dissipated into oblivion.  My bowels were perforated and I had developed an abscess in my colon that was dangerous and deemed fatal.  No longer able to evade what I had feared for years, surgery was imminent.  My colon was finally excised from my body, leaving me with a temporary ileostomy.  It was the most difficult ordeal of my entire existence but it saved my life, and after a four year flare, finally gave me a life worth living again.

It has almost been a year since that fateful day, and I am doing much better than I have in a long time.  I still face many challenges and have yet to tackle many more obstacles.  Even though this disease has immensely altered my life, it has instilled an incredible strength inside of me, that I would have never had otherwise.  I still believe that no matter what, everything in this life happens for a reason and as long as my heart still beats, my existence in this world has purpose.