In 2024, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease after being hospitalised due to the severity of my symptoms.

I had suffered for a decade, mostly wilfully misguided in how ill I really was. Often, I felt like I deserved it - like it was some kind of karma for any bad deed (like that wrapper I put in the bin that blew out, and I left on the ground). When my symptoms escalated in 2021 during my degree at KCL I gritted my teeth and bared it because the thought of being diagnosed with something chronic like Crohn's was so much worse than a bit of stomach cramps.

Over the course of the next three years I got worse, as you can expect. The nature of Crohn's is that it largely impacts your bowel. What does that mean? One of the most common symptoms is - stay with me now - watery, painful diarrhoea. To me, this was disgusting. It was not something to be shared, so I never braved a doctor. The thought of a colonoscopy was humiliating, which was ironic because incontinence at 23-years-old was far worse. Eventually that stomach cramp I mentioned became agonising pain, dragging myself to the toilet every night to throw up from the pain. Passing stool 8+ times a day.

If you think this is disgusting, too much information, something private. You're wrong. The stigma surrounding something so very normal is what makes young children, like I was at the beginning, embarrassed to speak up. The only embarrassing thing is not supporting someone because they don't have a pretty chronic illness.

When I finally went to a professional (who essentially saved my life), the Crohn's disease was so severe I could no longer walk my dog. I rested all day, couldn't keep food down. An ultrasound showed my bowel had swollen to three times its size, the amount of blood being redirected meant my day-to-day thinking was hugely impacted. They couldn't even perform a full colonoscopy, because there were so many ulcers.

I lost six months of my life to pure recovery from how sick I was. I'm incredibly lucky and grateful the drugs worked. I still lose so much of my life to Crohn's. Every two weeks I self inject, and it hurts. I'm terrified of being in that much pain again. I hadn't run any distance since I was 15, and laying prone in that hospital bed incentivised me to try. To use my legs and arms and every part of me that still worked - which leads me now to the London Marathon.

Part of Crohn's and Colitis UK is driven towards the research of IBD, and eventually, hopefully, a cure. Despite how deluded it is, I believe there is a cure. More importantly I know now there is a path in this chronic illness that doesn't have to have pain at all, and I hope for there to be more awareness so other young teenagers see this, too. Without the embarrassment.

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We’re the UK’s leading charity for Crohn’s and Colitis.

Right now, an estimated 500,000 people in the UK are living with a lifelong disease that many people have never heard of. And the real number could be almost double that.

Because of the stigma and misunderstanding surrounding these diseases, thousands of people are suffering in silence.

But they’re not alone.

We’re working to improve diagnosis and treatment, and to fund research into a cure; to raise awareness and to give people hope, comfort and confidence to live freer, fuller lives.