By: michele

michele — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:30:55 +0000

I do not have any symptoms of Crohn’s disease, but my mother dealt with all of these symptoms on the sever side from 2001 until her death in 2005. she had several exploratory surgeries and part of her intestines removed as they had fused together and had even fused with a portion of her vaginal wall. She was never diagnosed with Crohn’s. In fact at one point she was told that she was dying and that she should just go home and prepare. No diagnosis provided. She had one doctor who was not satisfied with that answer, but he still did not know what the problem was. I do not know everything that he did for her, but she was treated with steroids and a special diet. eventually she regained some of her health and gained a bit of her weight back. She had drank, but this doctor told her that she must stop. She did pretty good with that, but not perfect. My step-father was not very supportive of the drinking and smoking issue. She was improving and remained fairly symtom free (w/the exception of diarhea). for over 2 years. The last 6 months of her life she spent in extreme agony. She was treated through a VA hospital and had surgery w/the removal of her gall bladder and another surgery that involved the flushing of her intestines with antibiotics. non of this worked. She was in and out of hospitals for the next several months. The last week of her life we were told that she had scerosis of the liver and that if she made it out of the hospital to call hospice. She did not make it out of the hospital and she had been checked for scerosis before and that test was negative. I was always suspicious of the last diagnosis and when I saw that one of the complications of severe Crohn’s is liver scerosis it made sense.
the month after my mother’s death, my grandmother started experiencing extreme pain and other similar symptoms as my mother. My grandmother lives in California and had access to great doctors. She had a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease in a very short time. My aunt became curious and began searching on-line and discovered that all of my mother’s symptoms were the same as extreme cases and that it is suspected that it is genetic. Since all of the women in my immediate family suffer with some form of IBS she decided that she would direct me to the=is information.
While we will never know for sure if this is what my mother died from at the age of 64, my grandmother, aunt and I believe that she was a victim of both ignorant doctors and Crohn’s disease. I am not blaming the doctors, now days with the internet, we the individual must also take resposibility for our symptoms and possible ailments or diagnosis.
I just want to thank you for allowing me a place to express my feelings on this topic. The death of my mother is not something that I seem to be able to deal with and I usuallly remove myself from it since I did not live in a close proximity to her I generally live in state of denial. Since my aunt’s original search I have made sure that I am educated to the symtoms of this disease so that my own children will not have to deal with the unnecessary death of their mother.

Comments on: Crohn’s disease and me.

By: michele