Hi Hilary, thank you for reading. I'm glad you learned something new about IBD :) Have a wonderful holiday!

Hi Klancee,

Thank you for reading and also for sharing your story. Dealing with it for decades would have been very difficult, but I hope that it made you a stronger person for coming out of it.

I hate that you were given the run around by your doctors and even blamed for being sick! That's not what patients need, and I can only hope that doctors today are wiser.

Thanks for reading, Cindy!

Crazy to think I had a doctor who kept telling me my weight loss and pains where all in my head. His advice was not to get stressed 😩 

If I am ever tempted to pity myself for having an ostomy ( hasn't happened yet), I am going to re read this post/thread. Thanks for bringing it to the front again!

For many of us, the diagnosis/treatment phase goes on way too long. By the time we get this life saving surgery, we are very ill indeed.

Posted by: john68

Crazy to think I had a doctor who kept telling me my weight loss and pains where all in my head. His advice was not to get stressed 😩 

Too many people are told that their illness is "in their head" - and many suffer for years because of it. 

Such an informative article. I have been struggling with how this seemed to come out of nowhere for me. I went from feeling sick starting at the end of March 2018 to having my colon removed in mid June. Of course that two and a half months was like you described. Anything I ate either went right through me or came back up. I lost 40 pounds in that time. I tried going to dr a couple times but she didn't know what was wrong and did some inconclusive tests. 

But after reading this article you wrote, I can see there were warning signs. 12 years ago, I had a huge abscess, which was the most painful thing ever. My dr at the time had me schedule with a surgeon to drain it. In the time waiting for my appt, it burst. My right butt cheek is where it came through but it was way up in me. The surgeon said it was the size of a small football. I had two different surgeries that year to have drain tubes put in. And my husband and I joked that we should buy stock in the butt pad company. I've never heard of anyone else who used butt pads before (what we called putting the gauze between my butt cheeks). Of course back then we didn't know you could buy gauze by the brick and we were buying boxes of 25 individually wrapped gauze squares. Super spendy buying it that way. 

So, now in hindsight, I see that was probably an early sign of the Crohn's. But no one figured it out. Over the 12 years since the abscess, there were other things, mostly blood from my bum, and that is on me for not saying anything. But there was nothing else that alarmed me, so I attributed it to the after effects of the mystery abscess. It has drained off and on and bled off and on over the years. I would just buy a couple boxes of butt pads and deal with it. Now I know there is a fistula there that the dr says will never go away, and they put a seton(?) ring in to allow it to properly drain. 

I wish I would have read this years ago. I might have been diagnosed with Crohn's before I lost my colon, rather than after. But at least I have this website now and all of the people here to make me realize I am not the only one going through this. 

Thanks Eric!!

SqueakyandLiza, thank you for sharing that. It must have been incredibly frustrating to not have answers during that time. The incredible how painful those abscesses are! A large one like you describe must have been a nightmare! I hope you are doing better now.

Oh so relatable... love the way you write this, so candid. It is important to have a little bit of humour - otherwise we'd totally loose our shit!
Glad I came across your page, you help explains things to others who don't understand all that comes with the disease and can appreciate the tone you have written in! :) Thanks so much.

You're welcome, Beks. 🤗

This is unreal, I am so sorry you have had to go through all of this.

I feel bad for saying this, and even feeling this way, but your plight gives me some solace in knowing that my plight could be a lot worse than it currently is (I'm hoping it doesn't ever reach that point). I'm sorry.

You are an incredibly strong and courageous person to have endured what you have, and to still be able to smile the way you do. It makes me realize just how small and weak I am. I am unable to smile most days, and not because of whatever it is I'm afflicted with.

Thank you for everything you do on this forum, and for everyone you've reached out and helped throughout the years.

@bobj Make no mistake, I did not cope very well during the course of my illness before having an ostomy.

It was an experience I wish nobody would have to go through. 

I do hope that you're able to find answers (and solutions) to what you're going through.

Thanks ever so much for being so candid and sharing. God bless you man, you’ve really been through the ringer with this. While I don’t suffer to this level, Crohn’s is an absolute blight that seems so enormously misunderstood and dismissed by most.
Brave lad you are - thanks again and my wee heathen prayers go out to you for the best possible health and wellbeing imaginable