Hi y'all. I'm a dude, 25 years old from the UK.
I'll try and sum up my history as concisely as possible ... I first had trouble with my bowels in the summer of 2011. It was holding me back and worrying me quite a lot. I noticed my poops were 'looser' and often had a bit of blood with them, and was going maybe 3-4 times a day >_>. For weeks I just hoped it would go away on its own so it was only by late that October I went to a doc about it. From there it took a long time for my appointments (the NHS were fairly crap tbh) but after a colonoscopy I was finally officially diagnosed with Crohns in Feb 2012. It was another couple of months before I was given an appointment to discuss treatments. However, from reasons I don't know, it calmed down quite a lot by then, and it wasn't causing me many problems. So I decided to not pursue any medication and the doctor seemed ok with that.
Ever since then I've still had symptoms, but they've been very mild most of the time. Although my stools are still quite meh in quality, I go a 'normal' amount of times. The main noticeable thing was just that I was gassy. My bedroom has been in danger of becoming a biohazard half the time. But still, I never went in for any medication. I just wanted to forget about it.
What has developed recently though is that I've had quite strong depression/anxiety issues for over a decade and I finally went to get treatment for that last month. I had just got worse and worse mentality and physically and wasn't sure why. So I was given a blood test to check if I had anything affecting my fatigue, low mood, motivation etc, other than depression. There it emerged I have anemia, and it seems that has developed from my Crohns. I never knew it was an effect before... Apparently anemia is a fairly common thing for people with Crohns? Now that it seems I've had anemia for god knows how long, its dawned on me that Crohns has affected me more than I realised. This also conveniently (sarcasm there) has happened to come at a time where my other Crohns symptoms have got a bit worse.
So I have a doctor appointment again in a week. I'm going to tell them what I should have done a long long time ago and ask about some treatments. Quite nervous, because I don't know what to expect. Also anxious, because I wonder if I'm gonna be torn into by the doctor for not bothering with getting help for so long.
Mentally I've not handled it well. For 2 years I've tried to almost ignore Crohns, because I'm too shy and embarrassed to talk about it. My family don't know a thing, and only a couple of friends have any idea either. Its been an unacknowledged secret of mine.
I'm finally trying to change that now. That includes signing up here too. So hi to everyone :smile:. Thanks for reading all this if you have. Didn't mean for my intro post to be quite this long lol.
I'll try and sum up my history as concisely as possible ... I first had trouble with my bowels in the summer of 2011. It was holding me back and worrying me quite a lot. I noticed my poops were 'looser' and often had a bit of blood with them, and was going maybe 3-4 times a day >_>. For weeks I just hoped it would go away on its own so it was only by late that October I went to a doc about it. From there it took a long time for my appointments (the NHS were fairly crap tbh) but after a colonoscopy I was finally officially diagnosed with Crohns in Feb 2012. It was another couple of months before I was given an appointment to discuss treatments. However, from reasons I don't know, it calmed down quite a lot by then, and it wasn't causing me many problems. So I decided to not pursue any medication and the doctor seemed ok with that.
Ever since then I've still had symptoms, but they've been very mild most of the time. Although my stools are still quite meh in quality, I go a 'normal' amount of times. The main noticeable thing was just that I was gassy. My bedroom has been in danger of becoming a biohazard half the time. But still, I never went in for any medication. I just wanted to forget about it.
What has developed recently though is that I've had quite strong depression/anxiety issues for over a decade and I finally went to get treatment for that last month. I had just got worse and worse mentality and physically and wasn't sure why. So I was given a blood test to check if I had anything affecting my fatigue, low mood, motivation etc, other than depression. There it emerged I have anemia, and it seems that has developed from my Crohns. I never knew it was an effect before... Apparently anemia is a fairly common thing for people with Crohns? Now that it seems I've had anemia for god knows how long, its dawned on me that Crohns has affected me more than I realised. This also conveniently (sarcasm there) has happened to come at a time where my other Crohns symptoms have got a bit worse.
So I have a doctor appointment again in a week. I'm going to tell them what I should have done a long long time ago and ask about some treatments. Quite nervous, because I don't know what to expect. Also anxious, because I wonder if I'm gonna be torn into by the doctor for not bothering with getting help for so long.
Mentally I've not handled it well. For 2 years I've tried to almost ignore Crohns, because I'm too shy and embarrassed to talk about it. My family don't know a thing, and only a couple of friends have any idea either. Its been an unacknowledged secret of mine.
I'm finally trying to change that now. That includes signing up here too. So hi to everyone :smile:. Thanks for reading all this if you have. Didn't mean for my intro post to be quite this long lol.