About Me

 About me/My journey with Crohn’s Disease

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by. Welcome to my little corner on the web. I hope you’ll find some encouragement somewhere in it all. My name is Faith, I’m a highschool student from North Carolina with a love for Jesus and writing.

I grew up in a Christian family; and I was saved when I was very young. I guess there's not much else to say about that..there's nothing special, I suppose. I think my testimony starts when I was thirteen; when I was diagnosed with severe Crohn’s Disease. I don't think that having this "defines" me by any means, but I do feel that it is a major part in my testimony. Crohn's Disease is a chronic condition, which means that it usually does not go away. It affects your GI tract mostly, but it can also affect your entire body in different ways. It causes a lot of inflammation and pain in specific areas. For me, my ileum is affected most. (Say it illl-e-um). This is where the large and small intestines connect. Okay, enough medical terms. As I was saying, even though I was 13 when I was officially diagnosed, I had suffered undiagnosed for several years prior. After the diagnosis, we tried many forms of treatment, nothing worked. Eventually, through different natural, holistic treatments (thanks to my mom), my symptoms were under control, and besides the inability to gain weight, I was normal. Things were good.. I thought. But in the summer of 2015, I started getting very sick. We went to our family doctor when I was constantly throwing up and in horrible pain for several days. Blood-work revealed all kinds of wacky levels of who-knows-what, and we were urged to go to the emergency room. It led to my first time ever being admitted as an in-patient in the hospital. At this point, I had been throwing up constantly for over thirty hours, and still in tremendous pain. About five days later I was on new treatment and at home. Long story short, nine days after that I was back with assumed appendicitis. It turned out to be another horrible Crohn's flare. The pain was almost unbearable (Not to mention on the way to the hospital, we got every single traffic light red. Yeah, that didn’t help.) ...Let me sum this one up, the treatment wasn’t really working (at all) but there was nothing else to do but give me another dose and go home once my pain subsided a bit. So, a couple months later, in November, we visited a new doctor. We came up with a new plan of treatment, Enteral Feeding (Or nutritional therapy). Basically, a tube was surgically placed in my stomach so I could receive liquid feedings (you may have seen commercials for drinks like Boost or Ensure? That's the kind of stuff we use).

So, that treatment went super well (I'm still currently on it, but you wouldn't know just by looking at me). But, remember when I said my ileum was inflamed? It had turned into scar tissue. And after a while of praying and debating, we went ahead and had some kind of surgery that's too hard to spell or pronounce so we're just gonna skip that part. They planned on removing about 1 inch, but apparently it was really bad so they removed around 5 inches. I was able to go home in a couple days and recovered amazingly.

And, ever since then, the inflammation has been down, which means there is no active Crohn's. That doesn't mean it's gone forever, it is still a chronic condition. But, hey, I'll take it.

I may have spared all the pain-staking details in this little story, but you get the gist of it. I'm not angry about any of this, so please don't feel sorry for me. I know this was part of God's plan. And I know there’s so much more to come. So, so much more. Through my writing I hope to offer you encouragement, hope, and fill His people with the truth of the word. Thanks for taking the time to read it.

Faith