My Crohn's story starts way back in October 2010 at the age of fourteen, whilst on a family holiday to Spain. I had been noticing more and more strange things happening to my body; feeling sick as soon as I started eating, dramatically losing weight and just generally feeling pretty terrible.
When we got back from holiday, my mum took me to the local doctors, where I was told I was "just skinny" and that there was nothing to worry about. My doctor said I just needed to eat more, and I would be fine. I
truly believed this, after all, this had been said by a doctor, a doctor who had gone through over six years of intense medical training..I was wrong. I tried and tried to eat more, all to no avail. Eventually I went back to the doctors, only this time I was seen by a different doctor, a doctor who seemed to care a lot more, rather than just wanting to see the back of me. She monitored my weight over a number of weeks, and was so alarmed by my weight decrease that she referred me to my local gastroenterologist. Here I was prodded and poked, and told instantly that he was 99% sure I had Crohn's Disease, and to "go home and google it". As you can imagine, this wasn't the most reassuring thing to hear after being told I had a disease of which I'd never heard of.
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The Grand Entrance to the Birmingham Children's Hospital
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This was now February 2011, and I had been booked on for an emergency colonoscopy at the Birmingham Children's Hospital during the Tuesday of February half term. I was told that I wasn't allowed to eat anything two days prior to the procedure (as you can imagine, this wasn't hard - I was surviving - barely - on a bowl of Rice Krispies each day). After what seemed like the longest car journey of my entire life (which in reality only took just over an hour), we arrived outside the hospital at just after seven in the morning.
We found our way to the Medical Day care unit, where the procedure would be taking place, and were told to take a seat in the waiting room. Here, a young boy was eating a packet of cheese and onion crisps. I have never craved anything as much as I craved
those cheese and onion crisps, alas I was still not allowed to eat anything, and even if I were, they would have made me nauseous anyway.
My name was called out by a nurse, and I wearily followed her to a bed space, where I was promptly told to change into a hospital gown (my first and unfortunately not only experience with a hospital gown) and was given a wristband with my information on it. The nurse told us that I was currently in a queue to go into the modular theatre, where the procedure was going to take place, as young children went in first. I was becoming more and more nervous, and dreading my call to the theatre.
Three long hours later, at noon, a man who had introduced himself as the consultant informed us that due to equipment flooding, the modular theatre was out of use, and so my colonoscopy wouldn't be happening today. My parents and I had waited so long to see what was going on, and for us to be told that it wouldn't be going ahead at the very last hurdle was harrowing. The consultant went on to say that there were no available slots throughout the rest of half term, so we would have to return home and await his call when one did become available.
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| All That My Diet Had Consisted Of |
Three days went by, in which I was surviving off just one lonely bowl of cereal. Finally on the friday evening of half term, mum received a phone call. They had a slot in the theatre for me on Saturday morning. Our alarms were set for 6am, and we went to sleep with the hope that we'd finally know what was going on.
On Saturday 19th February, 2011 at 6:30, our bags were packed for the day, and we were on our way to Birmingham. Having experienced all of the pre-procedure tasks just days before, I knew exactly what to expect. I was gowned up, and awaited further instruction. The nurse came to tell us that I was next in the queue, and with that I was wheeled away from my bed-space and into the unknown. A mask was put over my face, and I was told to count to twenty. By the time I reached 8, my eyes were droopy, all of my surroundings became blurry and I slipped into an anaesthetic-induced sleep.
My next memory a painful one - I recall waking up with agonising abdominal pain. The doctors said that the pain was to be expected due to the procedure I had just had, but there was something different about this pain. Over the course of the next half hour, my abdominal cavity became larger and larger, as it filled with air from my bowel. I had a suspected bowel perforation. I was taken down to X-ray, where they confirmed that my bowel had been punctured during the colonoscopy. I was then rushed to the operating theatre, and as they were all in such a rush, the anaesthetist wasn't quite as chatty as she had been earlier that day. Instead I was injected with the anaesthetic liquid, and my last memory was looking down the bed to see my huge swollen belly, before being knocked out by the anaesthetic.
I woke up in the darkness of the surgical ward (which I was told was around 5 hours after I had gone down for surgery), surrounded by beeping and flashing machines, a central line plugged into the veins in my neck and an NG tube in my nose. I couldn't speak because of the tube, it felt awful and I wanted rid of it as soon as possible. I eventually convinced the nurse to take it out, to enable me to sleep. By this time, I was expecting to be back at home in front of the television, instead I was laying in a hospital bed, miles from home, with wires and tubes attached to my arms, hands and neck, and a very painful scar across my belly. I was told that I did indeed have Crohn's Disease, and that it has no cure. The 19th February 2011 is a day I will never forget.
