THE START

Okay. So to start off, Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammatory disease of the intestines, especially the colon and ileum. I'm lucky you see, I have this inflammation trough out the whole of the left side in my large intestine and then all through my terminal ileum. Sounds fun doesn't it!

Now that you're all caught up with what this strange disease is, I can start my story. Are we sitting comfortably?

It was August 2014. I was on holiday wit my family for a week in Yorkshire when I first started feeling really ill. Not 'sick' ill, but something else. I started sleeping for long periods of time though out the day, and for someone who slept for a maximum of 9 hours a night, was very unusual, So it had been about two days in to my holiday when I started developing a Barthalins Abscess- which made me violently sick in the end. I was put on painkillers after seeing the town's minor injuries unit and carried on with my holiday. (Which DID NOT feel like a holiday, more like a week of extreme pain and restless nights) but this by no means stopped me.

When we got home from Whitby- which is roughly a four hour journey by car, I started having respiratory issues. My lungs felt like they were getting tighter and I found it harder and more painful too breathe. Safe to say but I didn't sleep that night!

Te next morning I went to the doctors to see if they could help with the pain of my abscess, to pop it or something. Turns out, the doctor couldn't do anything so they transferred me to Hinchingbrooke Hospital as I was to been seen by the pediatric gynecology team. Don't get me wrong, all of the staff were really nice and the trainees were supportive, but IT WAS SO AWKWARD. I guess it's like talking about anything in that region of your body but for a 14 year old girl... it defiantly wasn't increasing my self confidence.

Anyway, to save you the gory story, the abscess popped on it's own and the team of hospital staff just helped all the gross stuff out of it. And to this day I haven't ad another one- Thank the lord.

So you're probably wondering why I'm talking about an abscess when I stared off about Crohn's. Well the reason is, the abscess is what started all of my symptoms. First I had the deathly cold sweats, the my temperature flew off the roof. Next came the stomach cramps, pains, aches and all of that exciting stuff, and by December of 2014 I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease after being poked and had cameras both up and down me in surgery.

Fun fact about day surgery- if you're the oldest child in the pediatric ward, you go in to surgery last because you're meant to be able t starve yourself for longer. I went in for surgery at 17:30. I had been starving myself for a month. Not purposefully of course, just whatever I ate came straight back out again, and surgery requires you to have an empty digestive system. What I'm trying to get at is, it was a really long day and I spent a good 10 hours at Addenbrookes hospital that day.

While I was in recovery, my parents got told that I had Crohn's disease. I had old scaring in my oesophagus, which is a sign of colitis, ulcers in the bottom on my stomach and so much inflammation in my large intestine that the surgeons couldn't get the camera through.

This basically meant that I got 15 years of easy life then it went down the toilet, literally! Having a chronic illness means monthly hospital appointments, infusions, new drug and medications. All of this was yet to be discovered.