- Joined
- May 18, 2011
- Messages
- 3
For quite a while my life seemed pretty normal, I was just graduating from middle school and finally going to high school. I had been so excited but almost like in the blink of an eye everything headed south. I would experience severe cramping, nausea, and vomiting and this was all during school. My new best friend Carley was getting worried about me and it seemed like practically every 3 hours after I ate I would have to run to the bathroom to throw up, at first it was just all little spit nothing to serious, but then I couldn't keep anything down.When the pain and vomiting became too much to bear my mom took me to our local hospital for tests, I had missed an entire day of school to do all day long testing’s; blood tests, ultrasounds, x-rays, all of that. However, they didn’t seem to find anything of interest, but they kept in contact with CHEO in Ottawa, we met we my new GI doctor and he did the same thing, running ultrasounds, barium tests, blood tests, and he soon even asked for an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. I, of course had no idea what that was so I just gave my consent and we went through with the procedure. Once we went through the test almost immediately after my doctor said I had Crohn’s disease and it was in curable, at least so far, this was February of 2009 (Grade. 9)
I didn’t really know what to think so I just let the doctor do his work, he put me on a steroid called budesine and told us to contact him if there was a change or if my condition worsened so we did. I finally felt normal again, I was going to school hanging out with my friends and they were all so glad I was okay. Then on Good Friday of April 2009 I woke up to, the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life, on a scale of one to ten it was definitely an 11. I started to cry out in pain and my mom rushed into my room, I told her I had no idea what was wrong but it hurt to sit up and it hurt to lie down so she got me a heat pad and a Tylenol and sent my back to bed. I then fell asleep for a few minutes but the pain never subsided, then at around 4-5 in the morning my mom took me back to our local hospital and they checked up into the emergency ward. My stomach hurt so much that I bent down to clutch my stomach when I walked and only moved at an extremely slow pace. The doctors at the local hospital gave me a shot of morphine and let me rest for a little while, but once again, they were still in touch with the physicians at CHEO. They soon didn’t really know what else they could do to help so they sent us down to Ottawa to the CHEO emergency room. Immediately the nurses rushed me into my own room because I was running a high fever and in excoriating pain.
My grandparents lived in Ottawa and tonight we were to be at their house with our entire family for an Easter dinner, it was now almost dinnertime and we had to call my grandmother to let her know what was going on. My aunt rushed over to support me just as all the doctors and nurse were setting my up on an IV, taking blood and analyzing my stomach. “Her abdomen is hardened over.” The doctor had said. Then when the nurses rushed back they had news of their own, my levels of inflammation was in the high 20-30’s, which was quite severe. They took me in for an ultrasound to see that the Crohn’s had eaten like holes in my bowel where little pouches of my stomach acid was being leaked which was not helping my discomfort. Then everything started moving fast, they inserted a nose tube, which fell down and into my stomach and attached to a container to hold the acid from my stomach. The doctor then called for a CT scan however, I was still in too much pain to move whatsoever so they wheeled me and my bed to the x-ray room and lifted me onto the table where I had to lie for the test.
My aunt soon left because they had been doing tests on my all night, until finally at around 4 the next morning I was finally admitted with my once personal nurse checking my vital signs every hour. I didn’t quite understand the severity of my case until my GI nurse had informed me that the surgeons wanted to cut me open and get rid of the bad part. She of course refused to let them do anything rash until they knew if my condition would worsen or get better. They put me on some antibiotics however, I couldn’t eat anything whatsoever but with the pain, I was in, I didn’t mind. I was hooked up to a nose tube, iv, heart monitors and that click thingy that goes on your finger, so everytime I wished to use the washroom it was a bit of a challenge.
I wound up staying in the hospital for 2-3 weeks before I was released and started up a different kind of medication for Crohn’s called Remicade. I had been taking Remicade for about 4-5 times when I had an allergic reaction, my throat had begun to close up and I was finding myself at a loss for air, and my temperature had risen quite dramatically. After that incident it wasn’t safe for me to use that type of medication again so I was put onto another drug called Humira, I’ve been on it since then and haven’t experienced any other severe flares like my first. I’m now in Grade. 11 and am finding harder and harder to feel truly normal because I keep having my long moments of pain, I just hope that someday my Crohn’s will be completely under control so I can get back to my writing and my dreaming of becoming a famous novelist.
I didn’t really know what to think so I just let the doctor do his work, he put me on a steroid called budesine and told us to contact him if there was a change or if my condition worsened so we did. I finally felt normal again, I was going to school hanging out with my friends and they were all so glad I was okay. Then on Good Friday of April 2009 I woke up to, the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life, on a scale of one to ten it was definitely an 11. I started to cry out in pain and my mom rushed into my room, I told her I had no idea what was wrong but it hurt to sit up and it hurt to lie down so she got me a heat pad and a Tylenol and sent my back to bed. I then fell asleep for a few minutes but the pain never subsided, then at around 4-5 in the morning my mom took me back to our local hospital and they checked up into the emergency ward. My stomach hurt so much that I bent down to clutch my stomach when I walked and only moved at an extremely slow pace. The doctors at the local hospital gave me a shot of morphine and let me rest for a little while, but once again, they were still in touch with the physicians at CHEO. They soon didn’t really know what else they could do to help so they sent us down to Ottawa to the CHEO emergency room. Immediately the nurses rushed me into my own room because I was running a high fever and in excoriating pain.
My grandparents lived in Ottawa and tonight we were to be at their house with our entire family for an Easter dinner, it was now almost dinnertime and we had to call my grandmother to let her know what was going on. My aunt rushed over to support me just as all the doctors and nurse were setting my up on an IV, taking blood and analyzing my stomach. “Her abdomen is hardened over.” The doctor had said. Then when the nurses rushed back they had news of their own, my levels of inflammation was in the high 20-30’s, which was quite severe. They took me in for an ultrasound to see that the Crohn’s had eaten like holes in my bowel where little pouches of my stomach acid was being leaked which was not helping my discomfort. Then everything started moving fast, they inserted a nose tube, which fell down and into my stomach and attached to a container to hold the acid from my stomach. The doctor then called for a CT scan however, I was still in too much pain to move whatsoever so they wheeled me and my bed to the x-ray room and lifted me onto the table where I had to lie for the test.
My aunt soon left because they had been doing tests on my all night, until finally at around 4 the next morning I was finally admitted with my once personal nurse checking my vital signs every hour. I didn’t quite understand the severity of my case until my GI nurse had informed me that the surgeons wanted to cut me open and get rid of the bad part. She of course refused to let them do anything rash until they knew if my condition would worsen or get better. They put me on some antibiotics however, I couldn’t eat anything whatsoever but with the pain, I was in, I didn’t mind. I was hooked up to a nose tube, iv, heart monitors and that click thingy that goes on your finger, so everytime I wished to use the washroom it was a bit of a challenge.
I wound up staying in the hospital for 2-3 weeks before I was released and started up a different kind of medication for Crohn’s called Remicade. I had been taking Remicade for about 4-5 times when I had an allergic reaction, my throat had begun to close up and I was finding myself at a loss for air, and my temperature had risen quite dramatically. After that incident it wasn’t safe for me to use that type of medication again so I was put onto another drug called Humira, I’ve been on it since then and haven’t experienced any other severe flares like my first. I’m now in Grade. 11 and am finding harder and harder to feel truly normal because I keep having my long moments of pain, I just hope that someday my Crohn’s will be completely under control so I can get back to my writing and my dreaming of becoming a famous novelist.
