I have Crohn's/Colitis. This is a subject I haven't really taked about before but it's such a huge part of my life that I feel it's necessary to discuss it here. Maybe this will be a way to express some of my concerns and vent some frustrations while alleviating some stress.
Since I was a child I've always had strange stomach aches. Every time I ate I would get nauseous almost immediately afterward. My parents thought that I was just trying to get out of doing the dishes, but that really just wasn't the case. My stomach ailments got worse when I left for college. A lot of the problems I was having I attributed to the poor quality of food on campus. The Chow Hall wasn't exactly known for it's exceptional variety of nutritious foods and I remember being notified more than once during my tenure that they had failed their health inspections.
Food contamination however, wouldn't cause the fistula that had developed starting in December of 2005. After dozens of tests to make sure I didn't have a flesh eating virus I had the fistula removed in March of 2006. However, we still didn't know the cause.
Almost immediately after the fistulectomy other symptoms started developing: heartburn, nausea, abdominal cramps, bloody stool, and diarrhea that just got worse over time. By the spring of 2007 I added fatigue, dehydration, and anemia to the list of symptoms. After being ill for over two years, and visiting three emergency rooms in one week I was sent to a doctor in Atlanta then admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital where I had my first colonoscopy. During my three day stay I was pumped full of medication, my symptoms were stabilized and I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis.
Initially my symptoms were somewhat managed by a combination of very expensive drugs (Asacol, Canasa, Colocort, Kapidex, etc.). I managed to graduate from college in spring of 2009 by reducing my course load and sleeping any time I wasn't doing school work. Since I had completed college successfully I thought that I would be able to make it through law school and hopefully become financially independent. I was wrong.
It became apparent in spring of 2010 that the medications weren't controlling things as much as they should be. The stress of law school was simply too much to handle and my symptoms increased. My hair was falling out by the handful. I couldn't eat. I experienced frequent fatigue, anemia, dehydration, and various other symptoms without having full blown flare ups. I also started having extreme joint pain. After a serious talk with my legal writing professor I took a leave of absence from school to try to gain some control of my medical condition.
Immediately after leaving law school the joint pain became so bad that I couldn't walk for days at a time. This continued for just over a month. Once that pain started to fade I started noticing another problem. I had developed another fistula. This time, like before, the fistula was just a precursor to more serious symptoms. After I noticed the fistula I started having short bursts of flare up type symptoms that would disappear within a few days. I realized that things were not as controlled as I had previously thought.
I had the fistula "removed" a few weeks ago and I'm now seeing a new GI doctor. My diagnosis has been changed from Ulcerative Colitis to Crohn's/Colitis. I'm now on Imuran, in addition to the other meds, which will hopefully help with the joint pain, and put me into a true remission.
I will provide updates occasionally about what I'm going through. I'm hoping that the change in diagnosis and the new drugs will help me be able to lead a normal life. I also hope that telling people what I have gone through will help me cope with the disease, and help others understand it a little better.
Since I was a child I've always had strange stomach aches. Every time I ate I would get nauseous almost immediately afterward. My parents thought that I was just trying to get out of doing the dishes, but that really just wasn't the case. My stomach ailments got worse when I left for college. A lot of the problems I was having I attributed to the poor quality of food on campus. The Chow Hall wasn't exactly known for it's exceptional variety of nutritious foods and I remember being notified more than once during my tenure that they had failed their health inspections.
Food contamination however, wouldn't cause the fistula that had developed starting in December of 2005. After dozens of tests to make sure I didn't have a flesh eating virus I had the fistula removed in March of 2006. However, we still didn't know the cause.
Almost immediately after the fistulectomy other symptoms started developing: heartburn, nausea, abdominal cramps, bloody stool, and diarrhea that just got worse over time. By the spring of 2007 I added fatigue, dehydration, and anemia to the list of symptoms. After being ill for over two years, and visiting three emergency rooms in one week I was sent to a doctor in Atlanta then admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital where I had my first colonoscopy. During my three day stay I was pumped full of medication, my symptoms were stabilized and I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis.
Initially my symptoms were somewhat managed by a combination of very expensive drugs (Asacol, Canasa, Colocort, Kapidex, etc.). I managed to graduate from college in spring of 2009 by reducing my course load and sleeping any time I wasn't doing school work. Since I had completed college successfully I thought that I would be able to make it through law school and hopefully become financially independent. I was wrong.
It became apparent in spring of 2010 that the medications weren't controlling things as much as they should be. The stress of law school was simply too much to handle and my symptoms increased. My hair was falling out by the handful. I couldn't eat. I experienced frequent fatigue, anemia, dehydration, and various other symptoms without having full blown flare ups. I also started having extreme joint pain. After a serious talk with my legal writing professor I took a leave of absence from school to try to gain some control of my medical condition.
Immediately after leaving law school the joint pain became so bad that I couldn't walk for days at a time. This continued for just over a month. Once that pain started to fade I started noticing another problem. I had developed another fistula. This time, like before, the fistula was just a precursor to more serious symptoms. After I noticed the fistula I started having short bursts of flare up type symptoms that would disappear within a few days. I realized that things were not as controlled as I had previously thought.
I had the fistula "removed" a few weeks ago and I'm now seeing a new GI doctor. My diagnosis has been changed from Ulcerative Colitis to Crohn's/Colitis. I'm now on Imuran, in addition to the other meds, which will hopefully help with the joint pain, and put me into a true remission.
I will provide updates occasionally about what I'm going through. I'm hoping that the change in diagnosis and the new drugs will help me be able to lead a normal life. I also hope that telling people what I have gone through will help me cope with the disease, and help others understand it a little better.
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