Better

Posted on 27 February 2013 by samisophia

I’m often asked if I believe ulcerative colitis has changed me for the better.

It’s a tough question. I can’t go back in time and see how my high school years would have played out otherwise. There is no me, as I am now, without ulcerative colitis.

Has ulcerative colitis changed me for the better? The simple answer is no. My disease has not changed me outside of my intestines. I am the same girl with a few extra pills. The more complicated answer is yes* – with the asterisk. It’s based on a technicality. No, UC has not changed me for the better, but living with UC has.

It starts with another girl: one named Tara. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease during her second year of medical school. A few years later, Tara had chosen to pursue a career in pediatrics and found herself on the inpatient rotation at my children’s hospital in April ’08 – the month of my diagnosis and subsequent hospitalization.

You can guess how this plays out.

I was the “I’m okay” kid in the hospital. I felt so good on steroids and so relieved to have a name for my disease, my answer to most everything became standardized. Did I want a visit from the art therapist? “I’m okay, thanks.” Did I want another blanket? “I’m okay, thanks.” It was my standard answer, so if asked if I wanted to participate in a mentoring program, I would have probably answered predictably: “I’m okay, thanks.”

Tara was the mentor this “I’m okay” kid never wanted. She stayed one day after rounds to share her story. A day past diagnosis, I hadn’t yet started to think about what a future with IBD meant. Thanks to Tara, I never doubted my potential. From the get-go, I knew Tara’s story. If she could continue to pursue her passion with IBD, my possibilities were equally endless. Until I met Tara, I didn’t realize mentoring is not an emergency measure; it’s a survival skill. Her confidence inspired my confidence.

Being a good mentor is not about knowing the “right” thing to say or the “right” moment to say it. There will be moments when you don’t know what to say, and there will be moments when it’s best to stay quiet and just listen. Being a good mentor is not about the story; it’s about the storyteller. The best storytellers – and the best mentors – realize that every story matters – and every story can change another story for the better.

Until I met Tara, I never believed a single patient voice could matter. Clearly, as I’m here blogging, I do now.

Follow The Leader

Posted on 26 February 2013 by jendavid91

Many years ago now, I was at an IBD conference with several other patients. It was the last day of the conference, and we were sitting in a room, chatting at white-clothed tables with our suitcases at our feet. At 16, I was the youngest in the group by a couple of years – the others were a mix of guys and girls: college-students, with boyfriends and jobs and so on. The moment that is so clear in my mind all of these years later was sitting next to one girl I admired so much and bursting into tears. Alarmed (she had only known me for 48 hours, it was alarming to start sobbing!), she asked me what was wrong. Through my tears and melodrama I blubbered, “I don’t want to go home! No one else understands me like you guys do!”

Even though it sounds silly and very over the top, to my younger self, it seemed like nothing had ever been more true. I suddenly had a family of older brothers and sisters who got it, who could coach me from the sidelines and pick me up as I tripped trying to figure out adolescence with a chronic illness. And interestingly, if you asked the group why they were involved, the answer was always the same – so the younger versions of themselves would have the support and encouragement.

And it’s true – knowing someone else like you could do it means so much, it’s the I-think-I-can to the I-KNOW-I-can attitude switch, which is priceless. For me, that was the moment when I was suddenly in charge of my life again, and since then I have been fortunate enough to be that support for other people. Having mentors and people to look up to, gave me hope when things felt small and constrained, and in a lot of ways it gave me the fuel to keep going.

I am still in touch with my IBD friends from that first conference. Many of them are engaged or married, working and successful, one girl and her husband even have an adorable little boy. Yes, they are still sick, they still struggle to find the balance between patient and person, but they are living and doing an incredible job at it. Their mentorship to me is something that I will never be able to adequately thank them for, so instead I hope that by aspiring to be like them I will make them proud.

Jennie

Personal experience

Posted on 4 December 2012 by jillplev

[editor's note: Jill shared this post on her personal blog in honor of mentoring and #ibdweek.]

The other day I was listening to a couple of physicians discussing a patient with IBD..

“He’s been on every medicine, and he says the Remicade is making his psoriasis almost unbearable.. I don’t know what to do because the Remicade is helping his GI symptoms a ton. Maybe Humira or Cimzia won’t make his GI symptoms that bad..”

I interjected at this point and said, “It’ll still affect his psoriasis,” at which point the physician replied with: “How do you know that?”

“Personal experience.”

And with that he folded his arms and leaned back in his chair and said, “Huh.”

..the moral of the story being that physicians may not place quite as much stake in personal experience as they do science and medicine. However, patient communities thrive on sharing their stories and benefiting from each others trials and triumphs.

The C3N Project and ImproveCareNow want to make it even easier for patients to access this kind of social support through developing a mentoring program where kids and teens with inflammatory bowel disease can educate one another, where older veterans of Crohn’s disease and UC can help newly diagnosed patients as their peers.

This intervention is in it’s infancy, and we need patient input. The program is being implemented at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Nationwide Children’s Hospital first – CCHMC is testing out a group-based program while Nationwide will be piloting a more one-on-one model. With the collaborative’s resources, we’ll be able to develop a mentoring model that will serve all 40+ ImproveCareNow centers and beyond!

Happy IBD Awareness Week everyone, and remember to stay tuned for daily posts through the week..