My fiance Lisa was diagnosed at the age of 10 with Crohn's disease. For those of you who might be unaware of what it is, Crohn's disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

It causes inflammation of your digestive tract, which can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, and malnutrition. Inflammation caused by Crohn's disease can involve different areas of the digestive tract in different people. The worst affected parts for Lisa were her large intestine and rectum, where she also had perianal disease.

(This is an incurable disease)

This has had a major impact on her life and prevented her to do a lot of basic things in life like being able to work a full time job or even any job at times due to severe fatigue and pain caused by this disease. Missing so many days&nights out with friends & family because of how fatigued she can get and whether or not she would spend most of the time out in the bathroom.

Over the last 17 years, family days out or even dates with myself and Lisa would have to be extremely well planned out. We would have to know how long the total time we were going to be out, how many toilets were there going to be, where exactly they were etc.

When Lisa did get out with family, friends or myself it would still be restricted as she could only eat certain foods in order to avoid severe pain in trying to digest the food.

As you can imagine this in itself would drain most people but this was Lisa's life, especially when she just wanted to do normal things like everyone else.

Over the years, Lisa has had to go on several different types of immune-suppressing drugs to try and prevent her Crohn's from getting any worse and not have to face surgeries that she thought would be the worst-case scenario.

In January 2018 Lisa was faced with the first part of a life changing surgery as the immune-suppressing drugs were not working. This meant part of Lisa's large intestine being removed that was full of polyps, stricture, and narrowings which made digesting food a horrible experience.

With this surgery part of the large intestine would be pulled through the skin at the side of her belly button. (Ileostomy) This would be where Lisa would now go toilet (Yes number 2). Not only did Lisa face a major surgery she also had to face her body now being completely different and adapt to now having a functioning ileostomy.

I'm sure I don't need to go into detail about how hard this was and also how anxious this would make Lisa feel being a young woman.

As time passed and Lisa began adjusting to a whole new life, things began to pick up and allow her to be able to do some normal things without such strategic planning.

Then late in 2019, Lisa was asked to make a decision that would mean changing her life and her body for the rest of her life(no going back). This was to have a permanent ileostomy. The surgery meant removing all of the remaining diseased bowel and rectum canal which was also diseased.

After a lot of thinking and speaking with us Lisa made the decision to go ahead with the permanent surgery with the hope this would finally give her some freedom to live her life.

The surgery was a success and after 12 months of recovery and healing things are beginning to look up for her. Making this tough decision has allowed us to start a family which wouldn't have been possible if Lisa didn't go ahead with the surgery.

As I said this disease is incurable thus far and any donation would be greatly appreciated to go towards research and finding some cure for Crohn's. (Irish Society for Colitis and Crohn's Disease (ISCC).

I hope you can help me by donating whatever you can.

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Many Thanks for your support.

Walk a mile in my shoes

Created by Mark Tobin

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