Diary of a Crohn´s Sufferer

“La Maladie de Crohn”

My name is Mary and I was diagnosed with Crohn´s disease in November 2000. I was 21 and studying at University in Paris when i fell ill. I was in a foreign country, surrounded by people speaking a foreign language with no family near by to depend on and I quite honestly thought that my tummy upsets and diarrhoea were due to the culture change, exaggerated socialising and all the rich French food I was tasting. However, weeks went by and the diarrhoea and the belly ache still wouldn’t go away no matter what i took.

I started to loose blood, dramatically loose weight and needed to sleep more and more, I felt exhausted on a daily basis without doing anything more energetic than hop on the metro to classes and i realised there was something seriously wrong! In Paris, I couldn’t just pop to my local GP to get advice. So, I wrote down all my symptoms in French with the help of my dictionary and took myself off to the nearest Accident and Emergency, not knowing what they would find and thinking that I had just caught some awful bug. I hoped that they would give me some medication and send me home to my flat to recuperate for a few days.

Luckily in France the social security hospitals are out of this world, i was attended to straight away and in less than 24 hours, to my astonishment, i was admitted to hospital being informed that they suspected a serious digestive problem!! Seven days later, after a variety of endoscopies, colonoscopies and barium meal tests, i was officially diagnosed with Crohn´s disease and IBS. I was put on a 3 month treatment of steroids and anti-inflammatories and given a special diet to follow and sent home to England to recover. Being a young, energetic student, used to eating and drinking anything i wanted, it came as a blow to me to discover I was now to be on a 3 month course of strong medication that gave me a horrible list of side effects and not allowed to eat any of the foods I love.