I didn't consider myself a sick child; however, I did have a lot of colds, and I was hospitalized several times with pneumonia. It was the crippling abdominal pain that I remember most. I had surgery for intussusception when I was six years old, and throughout my childhood I always had a lot of large, unpleasant bowel movements. When I first got to college and had a few beers with friends, they all got drunk and I got stomach pain that was so severe I ended up in the hospital. I was treated for Crohn disease for several years, but when I was 27 years old, a nurse saw my chart and thought that there was something else going on. I had more tests and then got my diagnosis from the gastroenterologist.
展开▼
