Hi, my name is Maria. I am 34 years old and was diagnosed with Crohn's in 1990. But my problems started before that.
In the summer of 1987 I started with abcesses (rectal) and had two surgeries in a year. I & D's with packing. Packing is the absolute worst thing you can do to someone. The pain
from that was probably the worst I had ever experienced.
Little did I know what was to come. The doctor treating me only treated the abacuses and never looked for the cause. I still didn't feel well and knew something else was wrong and
the journey to find a competent doctor began. I went to doctor after doctor, diagnosed with everything from a urinary tract infection, cyst on an ovary, mental illness to female
problems. All the while I was getting sicker and sicker, started running a low grade fever and having a constant dull to stabbing pain on the lower right side. I finally found a
doc who finally said something was wrong and we were going to find out what it was. So began the battery of outpatient testing..sonograms, GI series, CAT scans, indium scans,
colonoscopies, endoscopies, X-rays of X-rays, etc...Still nothing!!! Since the pain was now constant and the fever as well, I was admitted for two weeks and went through more
testing. Thank you to my family for all the support and putting up with me. In the hospital the doctor would mention possibilities and with every possible diagnosis I would send my
sister to the library to "get a book on that" we went through that for 9 days when finally the doc came in and said "you have Crohn's Disease". Finally a name. But something none
of us had ever heard of. So off to the library my sister went and we spent the next few days researching this disease. Luckily the library was only 2 blocks from the hospital. I
stayed in the hospital a few days longer then went home to start prednisone and other wonderful meds. The prednisone worked, but unfortunately I was on it for about a year and when
I tapered off of it my symptoms returned. My doc was old-fashioned and was more on the medical therapy (drugs) approach than the surgical therapy approach. So began my journey to
find a good GI. Dr. Ted Bayless at Johns Hopkins, Professor of Medicine, and doing research on Crohn's, I figured I couldn't do any better than that. He had a 3 month waiting list.
The copyright of the article Relating to some else's Story in Crohn's Disease is owned by . Permission to republish Relating to some else's Story in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
