- Joined
- Jan 31, 2017
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- 1
Hello everyone,
I'm a 21 year old male from a small town in Victoria, Australia. I have recently moved to the city to study film-making at a university in Melbourne.
Mid last year while shooting a short film I started to experience extreme abdominal pain. It got to a stage where I was vomiting after each meal and I had a large lump on my lower abdomen. I went to the hospital, at first they thought it was my appendix. They sent me home on antibiotics - 2 weeks later I was back. Countless blood tests, x-rays and a colonoscopy later the doctor told me I had Crohns.
I tried to keep this news away from my family as I knew they would freak out. I didn't want to put them in a position where they had to come visit me - a 7 hour drive when you have 3 other kids to worry about, would be very inconvenient I would imagine. My brother suffers from autism, one of my sisters has Coeliac Disease they have enough on their plate.
My condition got worse, I spent 5 weeks straight in the hospital not being able to walk or stand properly. If my knees weren't bent at the right angle I would be intense pain. This is when I realized how serious it was.
I called my family when the doctors told me I would need surgery. At this point I weighed 55kg (I'm over 6ft).
They took out 21cm of my bowel and I now have a ileostomy.
I currently take 15mg of Methotrexate, 5mg of Folic acid and Infliximab every 8 weeks.
Anyway I thought I would share my story as I'm currently developing a short film about a teenage girl with Crohns disease. I will be using my real ileostomy in the film for a close-up bag changing scene. I've never seen an ostomy in a film before, so I thought it would be a great way to show what we go through and hopefully normalize it a bit.
Let me know if you guys would be interested in seeing the final product, and Ill post it when its finished. :ghug:
I'm a 21 year old male from a small town in Victoria, Australia. I have recently moved to the city to study film-making at a university in Melbourne.
Mid last year while shooting a short film I started to experience extreme abdominal pain. It got to a stage where I was vomiting after each meal and I had a large lump on my lower abdomen. I went to the hospital, at first they thought it was my appendix. They sent me home on antibiotics - 2 weeks later I was back. Countless blood tests, x-rays and a colonoscopy later the doctor told me I had Crohns.
I tried to keep this news away from my family as I knew they would freak out. I didn't want to put them in a position where they had to come visit me - a 7 hour drive when you have 3 other kids to worry about, would be very inconvenient I would imagine. My brother suffers from autism, one of my sisters has Coeliac Disease they have enough on their plate.
My condition got worse, I spent 5 weeks straight in the hospital not being able to walk or stand properly. If my knees weren't bent at the right angle I would be intense pain. This is when I realized how serious it was.
I called my family when the doctors told me I would need surgery. At this point I weighed 55kg (I'm over 6ft).
They took out 21cm of my bowel and I now have a ileostomy.
I currently take 15mg of Methotrexate, 5mg of Folic acid and Infliximab every 8 weeks.
Anyway I thought I would share my story as I'm currently developing a short film about a teenage girl with Crohns disease. I will be using my real ileostomy in the film for a close-up bag changing scene. I've never seen an ostomy in a film before, so I thought it would be a great way to show what we go through and hopefully normalize it a bit.
Let me know if you guys would be interested in seeing the final product, and Ill post it when its finished. :ghug:
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