The Catalyst Issue 20 | December 2014 | Page 15

After a young girl had endured several years of adversity from ulcerative colitis, her life was forever changed by an innovative surgeon at Scott & White. Twentyfive years later, Bethany Vetters is married and raising two children, and along with her parents, she is an advocate for the new Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Marble Falls, opening in 2015. At an age when most girls are fretting about boys and blemishes, teenager Bethany Burnam (now Vetters) worried about whether she would be able to discreetly manage the painful, embarrassing, and often uncontrollable symptoms of a disease that plagued her digestive system. While other kids her age had to cope with the occasional bump or bruise, she suffered from the side effects of ulcerative colitis, persistent and severe abdominal cramping and diarrhea caused by bleeding ulcerations along the lining of her large intestine