Crohn's Disease

A nonspecific chronic transmural inflammatory disease that most commonly affects the distal ileum and colon but may occur in any part of the GI tract.

in thinking about the things that have happened to me in my past, things that have shaped who i am, there are quite a few variables. my strict southern baptist upbringing was a major factor. being the youngest child of three children, the older of the two being out of the house by the time i was 11, has played a major role. being a fat kid and being in an abusive relationship both have placed deep notches on my soul. but probably the single most important variable that has shaped my pysche is my 25 year battle with crohn's disease.

so this is a serialization to allow myself to explore my journey. initially, i'll be jumping around. ultimately, i hope to put this all together into one comprehensive piece.

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i spent last evening in the er...just one of many ers i've seen through my 25 year odyssey. i'd been to this er before, but the doctor i saw last night was one of the few who actually tried to help. sitting silently to the side was my husband. a wonderful man who has stuck with me through this over the last 11 years. i can see he'd rather be home, watching the semi-final game between maine and boston college in the frozen final four, hell he'd rather be anywhere and that is understandable. it's become routine to him, just another fact of our lives together
the last 11 years have desensitized him to this, something that at one point i know he never thought would happen.

******

imagine that you meet a girl at work. you think she's a little odd, always firing questions at you and being extra friendly. but as you get to know her and spend more time with her, you find you like her. she's different than most of the women around this area(where you're not from originally, only placed there by the misguided circumstances of your life. so even though you have a girlfriend, you begin to spend more time with her and the two of you become good friends. although you are attracted to her, and the your friendship is the envy of your male co-workers, you don't think she's attracted to you because she's a little older, and besides, you have a girlfriend already.

but things go sour between you and your girl. you decide to go out as friends with your co-worker. after an wild evening, you find yourself liking her more and more, and now you know she likes you just as much.

you decide to take her out on a proper date to a nice cozy country kitchen restaurant. you order your drinks when she suddenly grabs her stomach and rushes off to the bathroom. when she returns, she's still doubled over, teeth gritted together in pain, while sweat runs down her face. she explains she has a chronic illness called crohn's. you ask if she would like to leave and after apologizing for having to cut the evening short, she says yes. you really like this girl, but you're not sure how invested you want to be in this relationship because of something you know nothing about. you ask her if the disease is terminal. she says no, but like any other chronic illness, such as diabetes, if gone unchecked and untreated it could result in death. you are relieved to know it's not terminal like cancer

the months roll on and both of you are really falling hard for the other. you decide to move in together and see where the relationship can go. you're in that first blush of love and can't seem to get enough of each other. she has a wonderful son that you adore. you always have adored kids, and even when she explains that because of her therapy, she's had her tubes tied and can no longer have children, you just don't care, even though you always wanted a housefull of them. so far she's had no major problems with her illness. she goes occassionally to ok city to see a specialist.

after you've lived together for about four months, her mother takes her to an appointment for a colonoscopy with her specialist in ok city, and you stay home to take care of the boy and work.

the next morning you get a call from her mother. there's been a problem with her colonoscopy prep. she has a blockage and has to have emergency surgery. panicked, you take off from work and race through the the night across the oklahoma planes in one of the worst thunderstorms you've seen.

you sit by her mother's side while she's in surgery. her mother fills you in on her history with this disease. when they bring her back to her room, she looks ok and you're relieved. however within an hour things start to go wrong. her temperature spikes abnormally high. she's gotten an infection in her incision and it's spreading fast. the doctor tells you both that she's very sick and will be lucky to survive. you don't allow yourself to think, but stayed strong for her mother. after a worrysome week she's better. they've opened her incision and packed it with antibiotic soaked gauze.

you return home to your job. she's still recovering and will have to spend quite awhile in the hospital. you'll travel back on the weekends to see her.

one day, while sitting with your own mother, telling her the story, you uncharacteristically break down and begin crying. it's at that exact moment that you realize how much you love her.

when she returns home after a month, you lovingly pack her wound for her and take care of her, just thankful that she's alive.

*******

that's my husband and i love him for it. i myself never knew how close i was to death until he relayed this whole story to me later. he's the only man that's seen the ugly side of this disease, yet didn't care and stayed with me anyhow.

several months after i recovered, i took him to meet one of my crohn's friends in the hospital. i'd met debbie when i worked as a nurse at the hospital. we both had the same doctor and always liked to compare notes.

she'd had the disease for nearly as long as i at the time. her husband was on disability because of back problems.

i loved debbie, like me she had a good sense of humor about the situation. with this disease you really have to.

we were laughing and joking and having a nice visit. in all the times i'd seen debbie in the hospital i never once saw her husband.

she was telling us the story of getting to the hospital. she said, "i just told him to drop me off at the er and go home. he's so used to it, there's not sense in him sitting here being miserable with me."

later, with my near death episode still fresh in mark's mind, he said he couldn't believe her husband would do that.

fast forward 11 years and empteenth hundred hospitalizations, none of which were as severe as the first one he experience. as i looked at him last night sitting in the room with me, i know he now understands where debbie's husband was coming from. after that many years, it's just another day in the life of a crohn's patient.