Patient Perspective: Crohn's Disease

A Decade-Long Struggle with Crohn's: John's Story

Diseases can seem especially devastating when they strike people in their youth. At age 19, John was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. A healthy, active teenager, John found Crohn's disease incredibly debilitating. "My life was on hold—I was not able to work or go to college for four years." Eating became painfully difficult; he says food felt like broken glass going through his intestines. Within a month, he had dropped from 165 to 115 pounds. "I felt like I was wearing my disease—a disease no one understood." After 10 surgeries, John became "desperate for a solution that did not include surgery." That solution came on his 29th birthday with his first treatment of infliximab. "It was the best birthday present I could have ever received.... I had just about given up hope, but with this treatment I felt like I had my life back."⁵³


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Endnotes:

53 Centocor, Inc., "John's Story," Remicade®, http://www.remicade.com/crohns/your_crohns/crohns_johns_story.jsp (accessed 4 October 2005).