The Downward Spiral to Diagnosis

"I have to use the bathroom" "Again?"

It started when I was 11. I remember the exact moment I first felt Crohn's pain. I was at choir camp. It hurt, but somehow I knew I needed to use the bathroom. So I did, and it went away. I thought nothing of it. But it happened the next day. And the day after that. And every day for the next year, every time I had to use the bathroom. 

This sign is my saviour.

I was ok. I coped all through grade 6. I did well. Then after school ended for the year, everything changed. I started having more pain, I was tired all the time, I had to get up to use the bathroom multiple times a night. I had no appetite. I started using the bathroom over 12 times a day, because of this I started losing weight rapidly. By the time I was diagnosed I had plummeted to a scary 85 pounds at my current adult height. I was so pale, and I started passing blood when I went to the bathroom, making me feel even worse. It got to a point where I ate half a sub for three days. Not half a sub each day, one, six inch sub for three days. I began to have the most excruciating pain when I swallowed anything. Even water. If you've ever swallowed a potato chip  and had a sharp edge drag down your throat, you know, the pain radiates to your chest and back and you can't breath. That was the kind of pain I had every time I swallowed.

My parents knew something was very wrong, so they brought me into our family doctor who ordered blood work. I cant remember what the results were, but they were not good. In less than two weeks I had an indium scan done. It's this test where they take a ton of your blood, dye your white cells with radio active dye, put them back in you, then take XRays. The dye makes you light up like a Christmas tree in the spots where your white cells go.

That test was enough to convince the doctors at the hospital that I needed an endoscopy and colonoscopy almost immediately. About two weeks later I had that done. I remember being terrified of going into the operating room alone, worrying that I would have to wake up in the middle of the scope to use the bathroom... I obviously did not have a clear understanding of how anaesthesia works. 

When I woke up I was taken to a hospital room, and my parents quietly told me that I was probably going to have to stay at the hospital for a few days. I cried when they said that. Then, the gastrointerologist that had performed the scope on me came in and said the rock solid words that would change me forever: "Yes, you have Crohn's Disease".