I
Iuris
Guest
Hey all,
I'm a 20-year-old guy from the Netherlands, and I've had to deal with Crohn's disease since I was 14. At the beginning it was quite dreadful. I frequently had to go the hospital for periods that varied from 1 week to three months. Which was awfully unpleasant since I was changing schools. Starting out in a new class whilst being on very strong meds (prednisone 40mg/day, with all its pleasant side effects) was difficult. I could hardly make any friends, and some people even made fun of me because of the way I looked at the time. But after a hard first year, my crohn's kind of eased off a little bit because of Azathioprine and it eventually even got in remission, and it sort of has been for the last six years. In those six years, I've been able to live a life like a normal teenager. My school performances didn't have to suffer and I built quite a social life. I even moved out of the house 2 years ago and went to law school.
Because of my experiences with Crohn's in the early stages, I'm trying to think about at least as possible. And because I've been in remission, I don't even talk about it with friends or other family. I'm a healthy looking guy for strangers, and to some extent it's true, but it's the uncertainty of my health that drives me crazy some times. And it also seems kind of useless to tell new friends that you're sick, because they're most likely(at least, that's the state of mind you're in when you've been on remission for quite some time) never going to notice it. At some time it even got to the point where I canceled a holiday with friends because I was afraid crohn's would get in the way, and I would be 'the sick guy' who can't even go on a holiday. I've also had trouble with getting close to girls (never had a real relationship). Usually I just don't even bother to try because I'm too scared they might be freaked out about it on the long run or it would be too much of a hassle when things(crohns) go badly.
So to put things a bit in perspective I decided to find some other life stories of people with crohn's on the internet, and that's how I got here
I'm a 20-year-old guy from the Netherlands, and I've had to deal with Crohn's disease since I was 14. At the beginning it was quite dreadful. I frequently had to go the hospital for periods that varied from 1 week to three months. Which was awfully unpleasant since I was changing schools. Starting out in a new class whilst being on very strong meds (prednisone 40mg/day, with all its pleasant side effects) was difficult. I could hardly make any friends, and some people even made fun of me because of the way I looked at the time. But after a hard first year, my crohn's kind of eased off a little bit because of Azathioprine and it eventually even got in remission, and it sort of has been for the last six years. In those six years, I've been able to live a life like a normal teenager. My school performances didn't have to suffer and I built quite a social life. I even moved out of the house 2 years ago and went to law school.
Because of my experiences with Crohn's in the early stages, I'm trying to think about at least as possible. And because I've been in remission, I don't even talk about it with friends or other family. I'm a healthy looking guy for strangers, and to some extent it's true, but it's the uncertainty of my health that drives me crazy some times. And it also seems kind of useless to tell new friends that you're sick, because they're most likely(at least, that's the state of mind you're in when you've been on remission for quite some time) never going to notice it. At some time it even got to the point where I canceled a holiday with friends because I was afraid crohn's would get in the way, and I would be 'the sick guy' who can't even go on a holiday. I've also had trouble with getting close to girls (never had a real relationship). Usually I just don't even bother to try because I'm too scared they might be freaked out about it on the long run or it would be too much of a hassle when things(crohns) go badly.
So to put things a bit in perspective I decided to find some other life stories of people with crohn's on the internet, and that's how I got here
