I have Crohn’s ; An Autoimmune Disease😮‍💨

I don’t really share much about myself but I thought this would be a safe space to educate people about my illness ; Crohn’s Disease

Don’t be fooled by my appearance because I look very normal like anyone of you but you wouldn’t be able to tell that I have a chronic disease unless I told you about it😜

What Is Crohn’s❓

Crohn’s Disease is a type of Autoimmune disease (also one of the two Intestinal Bowel Diseases-IBD) where your immune system can attack any part of your Gastrointestinal Tract at random, even though there is no infection going on whatsoever. This causes ulcerations in your GI tract and some bleeding may occur (pic 4 is a pic of my intestines when I was in a flare😳 peep the ulcers and GI bleeding)

The symptoms that the condition usually presents with are abdominal pains, diarrhoea or in severe case even fatigue, vomiting and bloody diarrhoea etc.

There is no known cause or cure for this illness. Treatments only aim at helping you retain remission status.

👩🏻‍⚕️How was I first diagnosed with it❓

I remember the diagnosis was a painful period for me as doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me for about 7 months… In that period i had diarrhea about 7-8 times a day and I was only just a Sec 3 student. Whatever I ate just came out soon and my body was unable to absorb any nutrients causing me to be malnourished. I tell you ah… the lausai is those kind that you don’t even dare to fart one cos essentially it’s really like pee through your ass… I was not able to go through puberty as such, causing me to be significantly smaller than my batch mates at Sec 3 (just look at my sheer size in pic 2). I lost >10 kg in that 7 months dropping from 38kg to 26kg haha and at one point of time I even had Osteoporosis. It was also hard for me to focus in class because I was feeling suuuuper fatigued all the time. When all initial treatments had seem to fail, that was when my doctor got me to do an Endoscopy and Colonoscopy before I was diagnosed with ✨Crohn’s Disease✨

💊💉Treatment Options (with increasing severity)

- Initially when I was diagnosed back in 2014, they put me on a 🍼Formula milk🍼that I had to drink 5 times a day to substitute any form of food. This was so my intestines could rest and heal up. Essentially the milk also helps to add a protective coating over my intestinal walls. This would go on for two months before I could eat any solids again. I felt great after the 2 months but once I started eating solids I flared up again… the Dr then put me on this once more and the same thing happened again after

- By the time I was on my 2nd treatment option, I was in my first year of Polytechnic studies. This time round I was prescribed with 💊Steroids💊 Initially I was quite happy as I could eat any food I want while on steroids but when the infamous side effect of steroids kicked in AKA Moonface🌚 I was so so so self conscious of how I looked and couldn’t wait to be off of it…. please look at Pic 3 for reference, it was so bad omg.. Anyway steroids worked for a bit UNTIL I was off of it.. by then it was my Year 1 Poly final exams and I was battling severe abdominal pains with severe bloody diarrhea, but I put off the A&E visit because I wanted to complete my finals as I didn’t wanna remod the semester and fork out extra money. By the time I admitted myself the Dr told me I could have died from blood loss cos I was having bloody diarrhea for around 1.5-2 weeks already🤡🤡

- The doctor then felt that basic treatments were not helping me at all.. and we had to opt for something more serious and expensive. The next course of treatment was a 4 hour long, bi-monthly infusions. This means I had to go to the hospital twice a month to do it and mind you, the drug was so expensive. If I recall correctly each time I infused was around $1.8k… thank god for insurance (I had to stay 8 hours in the hospital to claim under hospitalization). Essentially the drug I was infusing if used in higher doses, is for chemotherapy treatments as well. During this period I became more stable and the flare ups significantly decreased, so thank god for that - finding something that finally helps me stabilise my life in some sort haha

- Afterwards I can’t really remember what happened but that infusion drug didn’t help me once again even though they tried to increase the dose, so now I am on self-injection pens that i have to inject myself with every 10 days👍🏼 It is also another chemo drug if used in higher doses. Honestly it’s also expensive because 1 pen is like $70+ each time🤣🤣 but I am working now so it is fine…

How do I cope with everything❓

I think I was lucky to have found a friend in Poly with the same illness so thank god for that as I had a support system of some sort. Honestly no one was able to relate to how I was feeling in times of flare except my friend with the same illness… People can sympathize but they won’t be able to understand what we are going through. Funny thing is in almost all my flares I look perfectly fine on the outside😛 and you will only know I’m in a flare if you catch me running to the toilet many times HAHAHAHA

Also I am kind of lucky that I don’t really have any trigger foods that makes me flare? so I tend to just eat whatever. Maybe it’s also a blessing that I’m not really a fan of fast food as well. However, I do realise that whenever I get 🤯stressed🤯 I will experience tummy aches and diarrhea, that’s when I will try to find a way to manage the stress somehow haha otherwise it may turn into a full blown flare up!!

Anyway, this post is getting a little long… but ya I guess I felt inspired to write this post cos recently I saw a tiktok about a girl who was tired from work sitting on the MRT seat, then having an elderly man + his son berating her saying that young people these days don’t give up their seats to the elderlies. Just wanna say don’t judge someone so easily for how they look haha you don’t know what they are going through behind…. I think there is a prevalence of Singaporeans with autoimmune conditions, and that we all look perfectly fine on the outside almost all the time😬😬

If anyone is experiencing something similar and is need of a support system just feel free to slide into my DMs!! haha would be happy to talk to anyone with similar experiences as me☺️☺️

#BeReal #MyLemon8Diary