Placebo's Story

Placebo, Age 26

Well, I guess I am not really a kid, but my first signs that something was not quite right showed up when I was about 16. I was doing a student exchange in a country where I didn't speak the language, and this big lump of skin grew out next to my butthole. There was no way, I, at 16, was going to tell anyone about that, so I ignored it and got on with my exchange.

Over the next few years I always had a bit of an easily upset stomach; if I was stressed, nervous, on antibiotics, or sometimes out of the blue I would be nauseous and/or have diarrhea. Also, sometimes I would go to the bathroom desperate to go, and nothing would come out except a little mucus. I would also sometimes have to run to the bathroom, really urgently, and a couple of times even had accidents; I just assumed everyone was like that.

When I was about 18 I had severe stomach pain that landed me in the emergency room on a Sunday evening, and I had the pleasure of the doctor there grilling me about whether I had ever had sex or not (I hadn't). When the pain passed, they put it down to "mid-cycle ovarian pain" and let me go. I now know this was my first obstruction.

When I was 19 I started losing track of time really badly, having blank spaces, and falling asleep in class on a regular basis. I went to the health service at my university, and was found to have a shockingly low hemoglobin. It was treated with iron pills that had me doubled over in pain, and gave me diarrhea. However, I continued the treatment at the insistence of a nurse, and slowly brought my hemoglobin levels near normal.

Over the years I had an abscess near my private parts, and was found to have bleeding in my gut from stool samples. It was even suggested that I have a sigmoidoscopy (a camera a short way into the anal canal, usually done while the patient is awake). Because it hurt to go to the bathroom and had for ages, I refused the test.

I carried on leading a normal university life until the year I did my masters. That year I had three bouts of 'food poisoning', each one worse than the last, each one giving me vomiting, diarrhea and fever. After I finished my masters, I went home to my family, exhausted, and was in hospital with a bad stomach upset within a week. A month later, when I was still no better, I saw a gastroenterologist, and after some fairly unpleasant tests, he found I had crohn's disease.

After my diagnosis, I spent a year on prednisone. During that year I returned to my University to work as a research assistant, spent time working as an intern in a large company in Europe (spending some time in hospital while I was there), and decided to do my PhD. I also got fat, became severely depressed, and wanted to kill myself (these things are side effects of prednisone). I started imuran, and tried remicade, but a year and a half after my diagnosis my specialist and I decided I needed surgery.

In April 2004, at age 25, I underwent a bowel resection, removing 20cm of my small intestine, my appendix, and my caecum. I have a 3" scar running down my belly, and I can eat nearly anything I like for the first time in years. I am working on my PhD, have just bought an apartment with my boyfriend (who I stated seeing just before my surgery), and I am happy.

Update, June 2006

Since my surgery I have been doing extremely well, I have had only one (unxeplained) obstructive episode and minor bouts of diarrhea. I am in my final year of my PhD, and am doing work I love. I have also had the opportunity to meet others with IBD both here at home and in other parts of the world, and have truly enjoyed the friendships I have made as a result of this illness.

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