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My Story (I'll try to make this brief)

In my freshman year of high school, I started feeling sick. I don't really remember feeling sick sick, but I would wake up in the middle of the night and would be in the bathroom with "the runs". It wasn't every night; just once in a while. So my mom took me to a doctor who ordered endoscopy #1. He percribed me prevacid. By my sophomore year, it was worse.

During my sophomore and junior years, I had seen more doctors and had more tests. I had some doctors that told me it was all in my head, some that told me I had an eating disorder (I have always been thin), some that thought I just wanted attention, didn't want/was affraid of school, and some that even thought my mom was making me sick because she wanted attention.

My senior year I became so sick that by day 30, I missed at least 15 school days of school. That lead to me needing to be home schooled. That fall (the fall of '05) I had been to gasteroenterologist 3 or 4 and he ordered a capsule endoscoy where I swallow a camera pill and it takes picture. that should have been easy enough but when the results came back, he said "I know it says you have Crohn'c, but I don't think that's really what you have." That lead me to set out in search of a new gastroenterologist yet again. Dr. S., who treated me as if I had Crohn's but wouldn't definatively say I had it, gave me one type of Chron's medicationw hich I took for a good few months but only became sicker. He told me he didn't know what else he could do for me and sent me to the Cleveland clinic.

By the time I got to the cleveland clinic, I was 18, already out of high school (and no, I was never able to return to school) and unable to attend college. There, I saw a gastroenterologist and a rheumatologist. The gastroenterologist told me he couldn't see anything and the rheumatologist just told me I had fibromyalgia and that was the cause of my stomach troubles, extreme fatigue, and body aches. So I figure, "Here are these doctors at this world renowned hospital... they must be right" So in November of '06 I went back to N. VA and began seeing a rheumatologist.

This brings me to now. In December of 2008 I was so sick of being sick. I had been complaining to my doctor for a while but he wanted me to go on ritalin to make me wake up more and muscle relaxers so I wouldn't hurt. By February I had to quit my job (I was yet to complete a full year of college) and decided enough was enough. I went and found yet another gastroenterologist who ordered endoscopy #4 and colonoscopy #5 or 6. I had the endoscopy which came back normal (they were testing for ciliacs) but never made it to a colonoscopy. That doctor never would call back, didn't let me know he'd be gone the following week, lost my blood tests... you name it, he did it. So again, I found a new doctor. My mom managed to find the test results from the virtual endoscopy in '05 so i took it in and showed him and he couldn't understand why I had been going through this for so long. He did the colonscopy, printed out a report with pictures, handed it to me and said "You do have Crohn's."

I was finally diagnosed in April of 2009.
 
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I'm sorry you've had to deal with missing so much school. I missed quite a bit of high school as well, and people our general age group always have and continue to theorize about me and my "eating disorder" which angers me to no end. My parents used to think I had one before I was diagnosed, and people at school are always encouraging me to eat more, in a sort of "concerned" way....But what am i going to say, "i have crohns disease"? the answer is always "whats that?" and it's hard to explain in public, etc. etc. My favorite was when I just got out of the hospital, still very weak and extra thin, and a friend told me she wished she had some sort of disease so that she could lose weight. ha ha, I told her she could have mine if she wanted! Anyway, those people have things they are dealing with as well, and probably feel threatened by what they see as a form of self-discipline. The best friends are the ones who know you and support you. the rest who talk about you without knowing what you're going through can go do whatever they do, eat macmuffins and such. jk,

I'm glad that you worked through the doctor web and they finally gave you a real answer, so you can be on your way to feeling better and getting back into the swing of things. I hope you feel really good really soon!
 
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