This blog has been alive since 2015 and I have not published a comprehensive blog post about my Crohn’s story, until now! That’s okay, though, because I have lots of experiences from over the years to draw from. So really, now is the best time. Read on to get the full picture of my experience with Crohn’s disease and how it led me to create this blog and work with the autoimmune population.

The Start

In 2006, I was twelve years old. I had a pretty unremarkable childhood as far as illnesses go. I had nothing too severe or out of the ordinary. No broken bones or injuries. No evident traumas. I was a textbook normal child. But that did change in the fall of 2006, when I started experiencing the start of Crohn’s disease symptoms. I was experiencing fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, mouth sores, joint pain, and weight loss. Over the course of several months, this got worse. During this time, I had been to my pediatrician on several occasions with my mother, looking for answers. Infuriatingly, the symptoms were dismissed, until they progressed to a point where a doctor finally referred me to a pediatric gastroenterologist. It had finally gotten bad enough that I could not be ignored. This part is so common for people looking for autoimmune diagnoses and it is so wrong. To not order any tests or to look further into examining a child who is experiencing abnormal symptoms is not okay. At all. I had a ten-day hospitalization immediately upon meeting with the pediatric gastroenterologist to get stabilized and run all the tests. Finally I was given a diagnosis of moderate to severe Crohn’s disease.

For about sixteen months following that, I followed the guidelines I was given to manage my health (of what very little was given to me). But over the course of that time, I had two more hospitalizations, jumping in and out of flares, getting on and off steroids, and taking oral mesalamine. Diet-wise they advised low fiber, refined carbohydrates, and lean protein. So I kept eating foods that were in line with those suggestions: chicken fingers, Wonder bread, lactose-free ice cream and milk, potato chips, etc. It was a slightly altered diet to what I had been eating, but not an optimal diet by any means. It was not working. Being 13 now, and still learning how to advocate for myself, my mom never faltered in her belief that there had to be more to it than this. Specifically, she was sure that diet must play a part in a digestive condition. They didn’t agree.

After that third hospitalization, I landed an appointment with a sought-after functional physician who changed my life. We spent hours together and I left with a new diet plan, supplement regimen, and a boatload of knowledge of how food was interacting with my body, prohibiting me from truly getting better. Remember, this sort of approach was regarded as baloney, basically, from my doctor at the time. Miraculously, within the first couple of weeks I already started seeing changes, including gaining back weight I lost but couldn’t afford to keep off.

The Middle

In my middle and high school years, I found my health again, thanks to this functional medicine physician. These years were largely positive years. While I lived and breathed the benefits of my special way of eating and taking supplements, I resisted it for a while. I dragged my feet. I cried about missing foods. I got my first period at the age of 15, a late bloomer thanks to being underweight from the Crohn’s and would only go on to have it about three more times before having amenorrhea for all of my late teens until my mid-twenties. This was certainly due to the difficulty I had gaining weight.

It wasn’t until end of high school/beginning of college I started to have true appreciation for what this way of healthy, intentional, living was doing for me. I began feeling empowered by it and less victimized by it, a powerful switch that would ignite a lot of passion down the line.

College were tricky years, some of my hardest. The college lifestyle – drinking, cafeteria-quality food, living in an area susceptible to mold, and stress, all factored into this. I was in pain a lot and underweight for most of this time. I appeared to have a mostly typical college experience, but I had significant fatigue and IBD symptoms throughout. I began to cook for myself my sophomore year, which helped, but still, college was a trying time to the uninformed eye. I was not interested in dating or working out; my focus was getting through my studies and keeping my health together. Still, I babysat in my free time, had a short term cashier job at the nearest Whole Foods, and made it work. I did my student teaching first semester of my senior year and graduated with a degree in elementary education, passed my MTELS required to each in Massachusetts, and on paper was ready to start teaching. However, my student teaching experience, although SO rewarding, showed me just how physically and emotionally demanding teaching kids really is. I kept thinking that in one year this could be real, and I could be managing my own class of children. But it was hard on my health, and I made the decision after graduation not to pursue a master’s degree in education or get a job in a school. I took the year off to nanny, take a break, and focus on my health. It was strange, because I had wanted to be a teacher my entire life, but other plans were in store for me.

It was during college that Girl in Healing the website, came to be. I had been doing Instagram for my first three years of college and on the day of move-in senior year in 2015, I pressed publish on this site! It was the natural next step to reach more people with my message of self-healing. At this time, it was a place for me to share IBD-friendly recipes and advice articles.

In 2017, I came across the Nutritional Therapy Association and the philosophies were a perfect fit to how I already viewed food, health, and healing. I signed up for the next available round and in about 9 months was a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner.

In spring of 2018, I was 24 years old and feeling amazing. My Crohn’s was in a fantastic place. And yet, I started to develop pains I had never felt before. Long story short over the course of several months, it would get worse. I took prednisone at one point, which helped until it didn’t, and even took a few loading doses of Remicade; something I did not want to do but did not know what else was going on. My gastroenterologist at the time believed it was just inflammation but I knew better. It was not inflammation pain. I believed it was an ovarian cyst, as I have had one that burst before and the pain was sharp and similar. The GYN I went to see said if it was a cyst, there was nothing she could do but give me a prescription for oral birth control, though I said I would not be filling it. I was appalled that she didn’t order testing of any kind. Myself today would have fought that, but I didn’t at the time.

Both the GI and the GYN refused to prescribe pain medication. Me, someone who felt strongly about managing things naturally, was in severe pain and acetaminophen was not working. And yet, these physicians would not help. I felt so betrayed and let down by these physicians who felt like my lifelines to getting better.

After another round of scans, and abscess became visible that was not seen before and I was urged to get admitted. I spend months on antibiotics and having an abdominal drain in for a few weeks that was unimaginably painful. Abscesses are notoriously hard to treat from the outside in, as the body closes off the infection as to not affect the rest of the body, meaning they are hard to penetrate and heal. I agreed that a bowel resection was the right decision, and I had a bowel resection in January 2019. It was 100% the right decision. I wrote a blog post about that experience, here.

Today

As I write this, it is January 2023. I am four years out of that resection, still in remission and medication free. My weight is stable and I am strong. I am thriving and grateful. My health is not perfect and there are things I am working on. I have been building onto my functional nutrition knowledge and currently have taken three secondary certification courses. In 2022 I took my online practice and business full time, seeing one-on-one clients remotely as the main core of what I do. I rarely ever feel that “autoimmune fatigue.” I am thriving and grateful. I feel like I have lived a hundred lives to get to this point. I have changed, grown, and transformed so much in so little time, especially since my surgery. I have never been so confident, healthy, and happy as I am today. And this allows me to help others navigate the ups and downs of life with autoimmunity. I know I was meant to transmute my experience into a way to help others. I am teaching, but in a different way than I had expected. I would wish my darkest days on my worst enemy and never want to experience that again, but I know with all my heart that those things had to happen to bring me where I am today. I am forever grateful for those experiences. It is truly an honor to work in my practice and hold space for healing and encouragement for my clients working through their own stories.