I have had a very tough battle with this illness. I have had to leave my town and seek more specialized treatment because no doctor knew what to do with me. The only thing they did was add more drugs to me and I was just getting sicker and sicker at 17-19 years old. My dad took me to all kinds of doctors to even see if I really had Crohns because of how I got diagnosed. It was all so fast and just so unusual. All the children’s hospitals agreed with diagnosis and just kept telling me I was lucky to be diagnosed so quickly. Once I turned 18, I was sent to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville and had a doctor who had done all this testing and was ready for me to have surgery. He saw and understood how complex my case was. But as luck would have it my dads job changed insurance companies and Mayo was no longer covered.

I fought the insurance company so hard and I ended up being able to continue going there but then the Mayo Clinic said no to that provider. I was forced to go to yet another specialty hospital. Shands. As a Florida state student and fan you have this predetermination to hate anything that is a Florida gator! My new doctor I already did not like because she wanted to redo all the testing I had just done to see for herself.

I had some issues with her office but she really let me know that she was there to help me. She gave me her personal cell phone to make sure the issues I was having didn’t happen again and if needed anything seeing that I was hours away she could get things started.

We really built what I think was a perfect patient to doctor relationship over the years and through my surgery and I couldn’t imagine her not being in my life. She saved me. She made me go back to a sense of normalcy and she validated all of my concerns and heard me.

But like all things I got wind that she was leaving shands. Almost 7 years together and that was it. I was so scared and so mad at the time. I felt worse then when my ex husband and I filled for divorce. How could the person who understood my illness and me leave me?!! I knew she was going to go do amazing things and this other hospital but still I cried. I was one of her last appointments before she left and she got to meet my daughter but I cried. She assured me she was just a text away and the doctor she was leaving me with was amazing. I just knew my care would not be the same.

When it came time to meeting my new doctor I knew this was not going to work. I cried and cried in his office because he was so mean and just discredited everything my other doctor had done. He made me promise him to do my upper and lower scopes with him just to see where I was.

Well scopes came back just fine and I decided that he was not my doctor. So now fast forward to today and the doctors here brought in my old GI office and I agreed that I needed to see someone here if I got sick again.

Well now that everyone is convinced that my infections are coming from some closed hidden fistula all I can think of is being back under the care of my old doctor 😭

Here is a picture of us before she left

-XO,