About Me

Thanks for checking out my blog & my about me page! My name is Kaylee, that would be a picture of myself & my crazy family!! I am currently in school studying Elementary Education. I graduated high school in the spring of 2015 & I also finished up my 10th year of dance then as well. One really weird fact about me, every joint in my body is hyperextended. Kinda cool & kinda weird, I personally love freaking people out with it! Am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah & I have Crohn's Disease!

I haven't know that I have CD very long. My journey started October of 2014. I was a junior in high school & for the most part I had always been a really healthy person. When I started having symptoms I thought that I had just been drinking to much coffee. So I eased up on the coffee but nothing changed. I was having problems with accidents at school which was humiliating! I figured out that if I didn't eat anything then I might have to run to the bathroom but most times I was able to make it to the bathroom. I was to embarrassed about what was going on to talk to anyone, even my parents. It wasn't until my brother & I were getting ready for school one morning & he was taking to long in the bathroom. I had to run down stairs about 4 times in the span of half an hour.

Eventually we got in with a GI specialist in Indianapolis. After about a 15 minute conversation he diagnosed me with Irritable Bowel Syndrome due to Anxiety, set me up on a die called the Low FODAP Diet, & prescribed me a medication for IBS. After being on the medication for about a week I was so sick I couldn't even make it up the stairs at our house. I was taken off of the Bentyl & placed on another medication that my mom & I referred to as "the kitty litter". You dissolved it in orange juice & drank it...it was probably the worst taste I have ever tasted in my life! It was literally like drinking sand. The kitty litter seemed to work for a little bit, but after a while I started having problems again. They weren't anywhere near as bad as they were the first time though so I just kind of brushed it off as nothing. My symptoms would come & go every once in a while. I would deal with them, pray they would go away & go on with my life.

About mid October of 2015 I started having problems again. At first they really weren't all that bad. For the most part I was able to make it to the bathroom every time, the cramps were painful but they were bearable, & the nausea was about like the pain. Things started getting worse this time though, it was my first year as a college student & because of the problems I had experienced the year before I decided to live at home & study at Ivy Tech for at least my first year. Eventually things began to get so bad that I was sleeping in the bathroom floor. The abdominal pain, cramping & nausea were so bad that it made me tired. I was missing classes because I couldn't even make a 20 minute drive without having an accident. By November things had gotten so bad that I didn't even have the energy to get up & move from my spot in the recliner.

My mom scheduled me an appointment with out family doctor hoping that we might be able to get some answers. We went to the doctors office November 19th, 2015 & he told us that my symptoms sounded a lot like IBS but they also sounded very similar to IBD. He ordered some blood tests, suggested that we see a GI & prescribed me Zoloft for my anxiety. The next day I got a phone call saying that the blood tests came back & it looked like I had what is called Infectious Colitis. This is basically a colon infection that is caused by bacteria. The doctor called in an couple antibiotics but still highly suggested that we see a GI specialist.

By the time we had gone to the doctor & gotten the medications I had lost 20 pounds & was so dehydrated that just sitting ups straight made me light headed. On November 21st I started to walk down stairs so that I could take my antibiotics, I was so dehydrated that I started to black out. Sure enough I blacked out & fell down the stairs. That week my mom called the GI specialist that was suggested to us. Lucky I got scheduled for the best procedure known to man...the colonoscopy!

A few weeks before Christmas I went to the hospital for my lovely procedure. I don't remember anything from the point that wheeled me in the back until my doctor came to talk to my mom & I. Being told that I had Crohn's was almost like a punch in the gut. It didn't exactly really sink in until I had gotten back home. Scared & overwhelmed I sat in the shower & cried.

It was a shock & statistically there is no logical reason for me to have this disease. The first couple days after I was diagnosed I was really mad. I kept asking God why this had happened to me! I couldn't for the life of me understand why this had happened to me. One of the common things for any Crohn's fighter to go through is depression & I had been there. This was not the first time that I had isolated myself & started to get depressed. While I was laying in the recliner, that I almost stayed in so much that there was a permanent indentation of me in it, one day on my laptop I decided that I would look up what all there was in Pintrest related to CD. While I was scrolling through pins I realized that I had one of two options, I could either let myself fall deeper & deeper into an isolated hole or I could accept what God had given me & make light of it ever chance I get because if you can't laugh about it what can you do?

Even though I don't understand why I have this condition now, I know that eventually I will be able to see this as a praise, & I am so thankful that this is nothing terminal! I know I have said this already, but I really hope that you are able to take something away from my blog if you aren't a Crohnie & if you are then stay optimistic & keep your chin up! There are going to be good days & there are going to be bad days, then there are going to be really bad days but don't let them keep you down! Get right back up, dust yourself off & laugh in your disease's face!

~Kaylee <3