- Joined
- Apr 8, 2010
- Messages
- 447
Here's the story of my diagnosis from when I was 21.
I've always been one to have canker sores in my mouth every once in a while growing up, so when I got one again in February 2008 I didn't give it a second thought. Then a week later I felt pain while defecating. I did some research and found out I had an anal fissure. So I went to a physician from Africa since my normal physician was on vacation in Italy.
Well, he checked my canker sores and said it was most likely from biting the inside of my cheek. He also did the finger test and said I did have a fissure, which he surmised was from over straining myself while constipated (which I was several days before). So he prescribed me hemorrhoid cream, a prescription for Lidocaine oral solution and painkillers and sent me on my way. He also told to swish my mouth with Hydrogen Peroxide a couple times a day/ Several days later my mouth became riddled with canker sores and it was so painful I could only eat chicken noodle soup. I even had one on the tip of the tongue that caused the most pain. So I go back to see the same physician but he's not in that day but his colleague is (who is also from Africa). So I talk to the colleague and he deduces the same thing the other physician did and says to just keep up with the treatment.
Five more days go by and my appetite becomes totally shot. Though I hadn't eaten I still have tiny bowel movements of small solid fecal matter the size of bottle caps (which were very painful because of the fissure). My normal physician finally returns from his trip and my mother & I do a walk-in visit (her because of the flu). He looks over my sores and says, "let's get some tests done, but it could be aids." I tell him that's impossible since I was and still am a virgin. Halfway during the test I begin freaking out because of dehydration and malnutrition so he makes my mother take me to the hospital to get re-hydrated. My mother was feeling so ill that she could only drop me off.
After a two hour wait in the emergency room lobby I finally get a bed in the emergency room. I then go to the bathroom to have another small bowel movement and this time there's a couple of drops of blood. I tell the nurse and she says it's most likely from the feces coming in contact with the fissure. Well it's several hours and I finally see a doctor who says, "Let's get you re-hydrated first and then do some tests in the morning."
I finally get my own room and fall asleep. I wake up in the middle of the night with what feels like diarrhea and get to the bathroom as fast as I can with an IV bag in tow. As I do my business (which was a lot) I smell something odd. I get up and see a massive amount of blood in the toilet. I don't flush and call the nurse to show it to her. She says OK I'll inform the doctor. 10 minutes go by and I have to go again, with blood. After the third time I try to get up off the toilet and become very light headed. I fall like a bag of bricks and have to use my foot to pull on the nurse-call pull cord. I tell her frantically that I fell in the bathroom and her and some orderlies come to help me get back into bed. Right when I get into bed I bleed again, so they start putting me in a diaper. Every 5 minutes I have to call the nurse's assistant to change my diaper. After 30 or 40 minutes of this they rush me to the ICU at 3a.m. not knowing what's going on with me.
In the ICU they gave me six blood transfusions in 12 hours and every time I'd get a transfusion I'd lose more blood. During those 12 hours they first called an infectious disease specialist to diagnose me, then an Oncologist (by coincidence my mother's oncologist) to check if it was cancer, and finally brought in a Gastroenterologist. In the midst of all these doctors I remember a nurse coming in and asking me, "How are you feeling?" and I responded, "I feel like I'm on an episode of HOUSE." He does an upper GI endoscopy. But due to the loss of blood they had to do an emergency large bowel resection (1 foot) as soon as possible, so he couldn't do a colonoscopy. The surgeon told my father (who I hadn't spoke to in five years) and mother that hopefully it's in the bottom of the bowel and not the top, cause if it is at the top there's a big chance I'll die. Which nobody told me even though I'm was the age to make health decisions myself. They make me sign waivers and make me do a small will of what I want done to my body if worst comes to worst and I tell them to donate my body to science (something I've been wanting to do since I was in high school).
They finally open me up and I start bleeding out onto the table, so they had to give me plasma during the surgery. Next thing I know I wake up connected to colostomy bag. They send what they took out to the pathologist and it takes him 4 days to figure out it was crohn's. Right when I get diagnosed they start giving me anti-inflammatory medication intravenously and in 2 days all my canker sores are gone. Four more days later I'm permitted to go home.
4 months later I got reconnected and my life hasn't been the same since.
Come to find out I was the first crohn's patient that hospital had operated on in 6 years. Moral of the story, if you have Crohn's don't move to the Rio Grande Valley (south, south, south Texas) because since there's hardly any crohn's patients down there, normal doctors don't see it enough to recognize what it is when it happens. Also if I was living in Corpus Christi or Houston I would have been diagnosed within that day. I'm just glad that while I was there bleeding to death, I was still to keep my sense of humor.
The only good thing about all this is that it reconnected me to my father who I sorely missed.
I've always been one to have canker sores in my mouth every once in a while growing up, so when I got one again in February 2008 I didn't give it a second thought. Then a week later I felt pain while defecating. I did some research and found out I had an anal fissure. So I went to a physician from Africa since my normal physician was on vacation in Italy.
Well, he checked my canker sores and said it was most likely from biting the inside of my cheek. He also did the finger test and said I did have a fissure, which he surmised was from over straining myself while constipated (which I was several days before). So he prescribed me hemorrhoid cream, a prescription for Lidocaine oral solution and painkillers and sent me on my way. He also told to swish my mouth with Hydrogen Peroxide a couple times a day/ Several days later my mouth became riddled with canker sores and it was so painful I could only eat chicken noodle soup. I even had one on the tip of the tongue that caused the most pain. So I go back to see the same physician but he's not in that day but his colleague is (who is also from Africa). So I talk to the colleague and he deduces the same thing the other physician did and says to just keep up with the treatment.
Five more days go by and my appetite becomes totally shot. Though I hadn't eaten I still have tiny bowel movements of small solid fecal matter the size of bottle caps (which were very painful because of the fissure). My normal physician finally returns from his trip and my mother & I do a walk-in visit (her because of the flu). He looks over my sores and says, "let's get some tests done, but it could be aids." I tell him that's impossible since I was and still am a virgin. Halfway during the test I begin freaking out because of dehydration and malnutrition so he makes my mother take me to the hospital to get re-hydrated. My mother was feeling so ill that she could only drop me off.
After a two hour wait in the emergency room lobby I finally get a bed in the emergency room. I then go to the bathroom to have another small bowel movement and this time there's a couple of drops of blood. I tell the nurse and she says it's most likely from the feces coming in contact with the fissure. Well it's several hours and I finally see a doctor who says, "Let's get you re-hydrated first and then do some tests in the morning."
I finally get my own room and fall asleep. I wake up in the middle of the night with what feels like diarrhea and get to the bathroom as fast as I can with an IV bag in tow. As I do my business (which was a lot) I smell something odd. I get up and see a massive amount of blood in the toilet. I don't flush and call the nurse to show it to her. She says OK I'll inform the doctor. 10 minutes go by and I have to go again, with blood. After the third time I try to get up off the toilet and become very light headed. I fall like a bag of bricks and have to use my foot to pull on the nurse-call pull cord. I tell her frantically that I fell in the bathroom and her and some orderlies come to help me get back into bed. Right when I get into bed I bleed again, so they start putting me in a diaper. Every 5 minutes I have to call the nurse's assistant to change my diaper. After 30 or 40 minutes of this they rush me to the ICU at 3a.m. not knowing what's going on with me.
In the ICU they gave me six blood transfusions in 12 hours and every time I'd get a transfusion I'd lose more blood. During those 12 hours they first called an infectious disease specialist to diagnose me, then an Oncologist (by coincidence my mother's oncologist) to check if it was cancer, and finally brought in a Gastroenterologist. In the midst of all these doctors I remember a nurse coming in and asking me, "How are you feeling?" and I responded, "I feel like I'm on an episode of HOUSE." He does an upper GI endoscopy. But due to the loss of blood they had to do an emergency large bowel resection (1 foot) as soon as possible, so he couldn't do a colonoscopy. The surgeon told my father (who I hadn't spoke to in five years) and mother that hopefully it's in the bottom of the bowel and not the top, cause if it is at the top there's a big chance I'll die. Which nobody told me even though I'm was the age to make health decisions myself. They make me sign waivers and make me do a small will of what I want done to my body if worst comes to worst and I tell them to donate my body to science (something I've been wanting to do since I was in high school).
They finally open me up and I start bleeding out onto the table, so they had to give me plasma during the surgery. Next thing I know I wake up connected to colostomy bag. They send what they took out to the pathologist and it takes him 4 days to figure out it was crohn's. Right when I get diagnosed they start giving me anti-inflammatory medication intravenously and in 2 days all my canker sores are gone. Four more days later I'm permitted to go home.
4 months later I got reconnected and my life hasn't been the same since.
Come to find out I was the first crohn's patient that hospital had operated on in 6 years. Moral of the story, if you have Crohn's don't move to the Rio Grande Valley (south, south, south Texas) because since there's hardly any crohn's patients down there, normal doctors don't see it enough to recognize what it is when it happens. Also if I was living in Corpus Christi or Houston I would have been diagnosed within that day. I'm just glad that while I was there bleeding to death, I was still to keep my sense of humor.
The only good thing about all this is that it reconnected me to my father who I sorely missed.
Read.read.read about your disease so you know how to keep an eye on your flare ups and symptoms. sometimes in the begining it helps to keep a journal
