Dom's Story

 I got diagnosed with Crohns disease in 2016 after going to see my GP with excruciating abdomen pain and severe weight lost. After many uncomfortable tests, it was seen that I had an enormous amount of inflammation which caused ulcers in my gut and digestive tract. The GP said it was very rare for someone of such a young age(18) to suffer so badly from Crohns disease. Following this I was immediately prescribed medication which I was told I had to be on for the rest of my life. The medication included steroids to try and encourage weight gain as I had gotten scarily slim. 

Being told at age 18 that I am going  to be on medication for the rest of my life and in the event that this doesn’t work that there is the unfortunate possibility  of having to have my bowel removed, was very surreal and I didn’t know how to cope with it. 

I was told that my disease comes with anxiety and depression, I didn’t think this would effect me. Until a year later when my family and friends noticed a significant change in my personality and noticed I had become ‘sad’, which was the complete opposite of what I had been 18 years prior to the diagnosis. I didn’t enjoy the things I used to love most in the world i.e football, I was too fatigued to go to training and so this got me depressed and on the verge of giving up. As well as this I was fighting a constant battle with myself believing I wasn’t good enough because I was ‘skinny’ which as a  male made me feel slightly inferior to others.

The thing with Crohns is that because you can’t physically see it, it doesn’t feel like it is as important as other diseases that you can see the physical effects of. But it can damage a persons mental state as well as all the physical pain of ‘flare-ups’ etc. I’ve had to change my life style by not eating things such as chicken, as this is the thing that when seeing a dietitian seemed to be the cause of my inflammation. 

After about 2 years my GP noticed an increase in my inflammation again despite me taking 6 tablets daily. As a last chance at reducing the inflammation, I was introduced to Infliximab which is a biological drug that is used to treat autoimmune disease such as Crohns. This involved me going to the hospital every 4-6 weeks and sitting there for 3 hours whilst this drug was dripped into me. This soon changed to home visits and is something I currently still have as part of my treatment.

3 years later, I am a new man, happier than ever with my whole life ahead of me. Infliximab changed the way I felt drastically. I had gotten so used to feeling rubbish that once it begun to work, alongside my medication, I just felt so happy again and had just a positive mind set which has brought me to today. I would never feel as good as I do today if it wasn’t for the funds that have gone into the research of Crohns and Colitis disease. On the other hand though, the  inflammation will return when I come off the infliximab, and so for this reason, funds are still needed to find an actual cure for the disease as treatments like Infliximab just suppress the issue rather than directly treating it.

Thank you for taking your time to read my story and I hope I have helped other sufferers to understand their disease a bit more and understand their not alone in the way it can mentally affect you, as well as physically. Please share and donate to Crohns and Colitis to help in the search of a cure.

Thank you, Dom