Ignoring your elimination problems won’t make them go away. It all starts as fun and games you’re a toddler learning the dos and don’ts of the bathroom, yet once a child is potty-trained the whole subject of feces becomes taboo. Why do we drop this conversation topic? Is baby’s first “potty” all there is to be said about pooping? How do we start an open dialogue about our waste product process? I’ve had Crohn’s disease all my life, so I’ve pooped a lot. When the disease is active I have gone to the bathroom every twenty minutes for hours until basically passing out from dehydration. For a long time, I was too embarrassed and ashamed to talk about it. I kept my pain a secret from my family, my friends…show more content… Simply put, it’s an inflammatory bowel disease and yet that description hardly scratches the surface. Allow me to provide the Wikipedia definition:
“Crohn's disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that may affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract from mouth to anus. Signs and symptoms often include abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, and weight loss. Other complications may occur outside the gastrointestinal tract and include anemia, skin rashes, arthritis, inflammation of the eye, and feeling tired Bowel obstruction also commonly occurs and those with the disease are at greater risk of bowel cancer.” (National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC), 2016)
Over the years I’ve gone through all those symptoms and more, most more than once. During my late teens and early twenties, I kept my secret still, not wanting friends to discover my shame. Looking back, I know this was a mistake as I prevented myself from having a support network. It wasn’t until I was married and starting my family that I knew the stress of keeping this secret caused me more harm than it was worth. Stress only causes exacerbation of symptoms and kept me further isolated from…show more content… The treatment you receive varies with the individual’s symptoms and disease location. My treatment has included a few different drug therapies, including:
• Sulfasalazine: decreases symptoms such as fever, stomach pain, diarrhea, and rectal bleeding. After an attack is treated, sulfasalazine is also used to increase the amount of time between attacks. This medication works by reducing irritation and swelling in the large intestines (WedMD, 2016) .
• Prednisone: is a corticosteroid that can help to reduce inflammation in any part of the body. They can come with not very nice to serious side effects and are generally only prescribed when other drugs aren’t working. Side effects can include a “puffy face, excessive facial hair, night sweats, insomnia and hyperactivity. More-serious side effects include high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, bone fractures, cataracts, glaucoma and increased chance of infection (Mayo Clinc Staff, 2016) ”.
• Azathioprine: is an immunosuppressant which decreases the risk of your immune system from attacking your own “healthy” body (NetDoctor, 2016)
