I am going to try and tell this like a story... If you just want to get to the disease part skip to paragraph 2 
I was 22. I had just completed my diploma in IT in the beautiful City of Cape Town. I had met a girl who I fell in love with who lived 1500 kilometers away in the City of Johannesburg. I had decided to move to find my first real job and be closer to her. My brother helped me move... we were packing boxes until 5 am when the moving lorry suddenly arrived. We proceeded to pack the remaining things into my car and off we went. The trip was long and we had very little sleep. After 11 hours of driving we stopped at a diner for breakfast which was pathetically small.
This is where my stomach started acting strange. I had visited the toilet extremely frequently with terrible diarrhea. It lasted for about 2 days or so as I settled into my new home. When the diarhea finally stopped my stomach never really got better. I needed the toilet frequently and had what seemed like mucus coming out with little blotches of red or just plain more diarrhea. I had no pain or other symptoms and was living a pretty healthy life. I could deal with it... just needed more fiber in my diet or something right?
Fast forward one year. It's 2008. I had found a good job with excellent pay for a junior programmer and was enjoying my work immensely. I was living on red bull and fast food lunches. I had gotten myself a nice mince vetkoek(look for it on wikipedia, i couldnt link there) for lunch and was sitting my desk reading the funnies and enjoying my meal.
Suddenly I started feeling strange. Like an alarm was going off inside me. I felt like throwing up and a black mist started enveloping my sight until I was completely blind. My first reflex was to get off my chair and lay down. Someone was called and it was determined that I probably had a blood sugar problem because I skipped breakfast. I had decided that It may be a better idea to go home since every time I got up I felt light headed again. I proceeded to get up and drive myself home.
I was at a dinner party with low light, champagne, soft piano music and I was being introduced to the guests, who all were very keen to meet me. It was really nice. And then I WOKE UP.
I was being carried by my coworkers and laid down on a boardroom floor. there were people with horrified faces all looking at me. My pants were soiled with diarrhea. I was feeling weak. The smell was terrible. The pool of diarrhea was sloshing around in my trousers. Paramedics arrived and I was taken to a nearby hospital.
The diarrhea was my blood. A third of it more or less. I was given a endoscopy by a surgeon who claimed that it happens, and they didn't see anything. After being discharged 3 days later I was given iron tablets and suffered from blood loss aenemia for the next week or so, unable to walk up or down the stairs without getting a headache and needing to go for a nap.
8 Months passed. I was now 23. My symptoms had started to show up. Abdominal pain constantly, diarrhea, feeling weak. I went to the doctor who diagnosed me with IBS, but sent me for a colonoscopy just in case. The colonoscopy revealed crohn's disease in my ileum.
Since then my life has been difficult. I am now 24. This year I lost 18 kilograms. I look terrible(51kg). Pentasa and azathioprine have proven quite unsuccessful. Sometimes the pan is unrelenting, unforgiving and disabling. Ive lost many of the things that normal 24 year olds take for granted. I have went through depression, anger, suicidal thoughts(especially during bad flare ups). My symptoms have subsided somewhat compared to what they were earlier this year. I think that many of the lifestyle changes I undertook, like sleeping more, avoiding certain foods and alcahol have improved my life somehwat, but it's a far cry of what I used to be.
Some of my worst struggles have been at work, on days when I feel too much pain to work, or when that fatigue sets in. Not 10 hours of sleep could stop it, and it makes it really hard to work. I have managed to bite the bullet enough up till now to have a little sick leave left, but there is always the worry of it getting worse, and losing my job. And then there are the employers who don't understand that a little tummy ache makes you want to go home or the fact that you don't have a doctor's note because there is nothing the doctor can't tell you you don't already know and nothing he can give you that will really help.
I struggle onward in this futile war between my immune system and my GI tract, but sadly for the time being I can only watch as I lose little bits more of my life. BUT THERE IS HOPE.
After much depression and trying to accept the fact that I have this incurable disease, I found that there are many smart people around the world who are working tirelessly on fixing me. Even if these medicines never reach me and nothing comes of these amazing things I read, I find that having hope is good enough. If anyone is reading this and knows the feeling of hopelessness, don't worry, because there is a good chance that they might cure us in our lifetimes.
I was 22. I had just completed my diploma in IT in the beautiful City of Cape Town. I had met a girl who I fell in love with who lived 1500 kilometers away in the City of Johannesburg. I had decided to move to find my first real job and be closer to her. My brother helped me move... we were packing boxes until 5 am when the moving lorry suddenly arrived. We proceeded to pack the remaining things into my car and off we went. The trip was long and we had very little sleep. After 11 hours of driving we stopped at a diner for breakfast which was pathetically small.
This is where my stomach started acting strange. I had visited the toilet extremely frequently with terrible diarrhea. It lasted for about 2 days or so as I settled into my new home. When the diarhea finally stopped my stomach never really got better. I needed the toilet frequently and had what seemed like mucus coming out with little blotches of red or just plain more diarrhea. I had no pain or other symptoms and was living a pretty healthy life. I could deal with it... just needed more fiber in my diet or something right?
Fast forward one year. It's 2008. I had found a good job with excellent pay for a junior programmer and was enjoying my work immensely. I was living on red bull and fast food lunches. I had gotten myself a nice mince vetkoek(look for it on wikipedia, i couldnt link there
) for lunch and was sitting my desk reading the funnies and enjoying my meal. Suddenly I started feeling strange. Like an alarm was going off inside me. I felt like throwing up and a black mist started enveloping my sight until I was completely blind. My first reflex was to get off my chair and lay down. Someone was called and it was determined that I probably had a blood sugar problem because I skipped breakfast. I had decided that It may be a better idea to go home since every time I got up I felt light headed again. I proceeded to get up and drive myself home.
I was at a dinner party with low light, champagne, soft piano music and I was being introduced to the guests, who all were very keen to meet me. It was really nice. And then I WOKE UP.
I was being carried by my coworkers and laid down on a boardroom floor. there were people with horrified faces all looking at me. My pants were soiled with diarrhea. I was feeling weak. The smell was terrible. The pool of diarrhea was sloshing around in my trousers. Paramedics arrived and I was taken to a nearby hospital.
The diarrhea was my blood. A third of it more or less. I was given a endoscopy by a surgeon who claimed that it happens, and they didn't see anything. After being discharged 3 days later I was given iron tablets and suffered from blood loss aenemia for the next week or so, unable to walk up or down the stairs without getting a headache and needing to go for a nap.
8 Months passed. I was now 23. My symptoms had started to show up. Abdominal pain constantly, diarrhea, feeling weak. I went to the doctor who diagnosed me with IBS, but sent me for a colonoscopy just in case. The colonoscopy revealed crohn's disease in my ileum.
Since then my life has been difficult. I am now 24. This year I lost 18 kilograms. I look terrible(51kg). Pentasa and azathioprine have proven quite unsuccessful. Sometimes the pan is unrelenting, unforgiving and disabling. Ive lost many of the things that normal 24 year olds take for granted. I have went through depression, anger, suicidal thoughts(especially during bad flare ups). My symptoms have subsided somewhat compared to what they were earlier this year. I think that many of the lifestyle changes I undertook, like sleeping more, avoiding certain foods and alcahol have improved my life somehwat, but it's a far cry of what I used to be.
Some of my worst struggles have been at work, on days when I feel too much pain to work, or when that fatigue sets in. Not 10 hours of sleep could stop it, and it makes it really hard to work. I have managed to bite the bullet enough up till now to have a little sick leave left, but there is always the worry of it getting worse, and losing my job. And then there are the employers who don't understand that a little tummy ache makes you want to go home or the fact that you don't have a doctor's note because there is nothing the doctor can't tell you you don't already know and nothing he can give you that will really help.
I struggle onward in this futile war between my immune system and my GI tract, but sadly for the time being I can only watch as I lose little bits more of my life. BUT THERE IS HOPE.
After much depression and trying to accept the fact that I have this incurable disease, I found that there are many smart people around the world who are working tirelessly on fixing me. Even if these medicines never reach me and nothing comes of these amazing things I read, I find that having hope is good enough. If anyone is reading this and knows the feeling of hopelessness, don't worry, because there is a good chance that they might cure us in our lifetimes.
