Back in 2000 I was a freshman in high school. I was a cheerleader and I played softball. I had a great group of friends and I was enjoying being a teenager. Sports. Boys. Cheering. Shopping. School. I was a great student, had a part time job working retail, was a three-sport athlete. Life couldn't get any better, and I thought I knew it all. At some point during late winter/early spring I started noticing blood when I would go the bathroom. HOLY EMBARRASSING! Let's just keep that between me and me for a little while. Softball season starts up and after tryout/double sessions I am having trouble walking. Slight tear in right quadricep. Simple enough - Rest. Ice. Ibuprofen.
Oh. No. Things get worse. Well, my quad gets better but I am beginning to lose a lot of blood. I remember my Uncle making a comment about how I was cold and tired all the time - that I must be low on iron - HE DID NOT KNOW HOW RIGHT HE WAS! So here I am, 15 years old with no motivation anymore and I'm beginning to bleed whenever I fart. Okay okay, I'll tell my mother.
Ops. Something really isn't right. My mom looks worried. I'm soon meeting with my primary care physician who refers me to Children's Hospital Boston. Now wait one minute. Children's is the best hospital around. And for really sick people. How can I be going here? I'm not in any pain. I'm not sick. It's just a little blood right?
Into my life walks Dr. Higuchi. For any child in the Boston area who needs a GI doctor - I HIGHLY suggest her. I went through the whole array of testing - endoscopy, colonoscopy, blood tests, ultrasounds, MRI's the whole scheebang. It was my colonoscopy that finally diagnosed me. Up until then Dr. Higuchi was concluding that I just had a case of colon polyps. The hour long procedure took nearly 3 hours because Dr. Higuchi was so surprised at what she saw. My mother said my father paced the waiting room the entire time, worried as time went on and I hadn't come out yet.
What Dr. Higuchi found was an inflamed patch right at my rectum (probably where all the visible blood was coming from) as well as one the completely encompassed my appendix that she was afraid to take a biopsy of it fearing that it would cause an appendicitis. Those were the major areas affected. It was official. I had Crohn's Disease.
Who would have thought that that May day would change my life so quickly.
Here is where I began a regime of Rowasa suppositories and Asacol 1200mg 3X a day. It's also where I began my defiance of Crohn's Disease.
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