IBD’ERS BEING
INVOLVED
How brave IBD’ers took their toughest times & turned them into helping others.
FEATURING C.A.R.E FOR CROHN’S FOUNDATION
My name is Sybille G., founder of the C.A.R.E
for Crohn’s Foundation. I started this
organization recently to bring awareness to the
disease and to help those who have it break
their silence. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s
when I was 14 years old, a freshman in High
School. I went from an overly active student
who participated in many extracurricular
activities, including dance, to “the girl who is
always sick”, and everything just stopped. My
only after school activity then became going
to the doctor’s office, or temporarily living in
a hospital. I was diagnosed with a disease I
had NEVER heard of and I had no idea of how
much it would affect my life.
“Wait, what do you mean I can’t eat that?
What do you mean I can’t dance? I can’t
believe I slept this long!” At 13 and 14 years
old you are not trying to hear that you can
no longer eat some of the foods you love.
It was strange for me to experience joint
pains so bad that even walking was a difficult task, abdominal pains so harsh that the
fetal position was the only position I knew. People on the outside looking in who had no
idea of my illness may have thought that ‘lazy’ was my middle name, but it was just the
extreme fatigue I experienced from the lack of nutrition I was getting from being unable
to eat properly, and the anemia I developed from losing so much blood from the internal
bleeding I had from my irritated intestine. I was sleeping for as long as 12-16 hours at a
time, and waking up and still being unable to even move from my bed. That’s just a short
version of the beginning of what was to come.
All through high school it was always a battle for my health, for my weight, and for my
social life. Although I was on tons of pills, none of them put me in a state of remission,
so my health was always up and down. When it was at a somewhat calm, I was able
to participate in school activities, hang out with friends, and just try to be as normal of
52