My name is Life with Crohn's

My Name is Naomi Turner-Schroeder. I am 28 and I have been living with Crohn's disease for about 3 years now, and trying to deal with it's flair ups and other complications without health insurance.

Today I decided to start a blog. Maybe it would help, as today, like many days is a bad day. 

In case you don't know, Crohn’s disease is a disease that causes inflammation, or swelling, and irritation of any part of the digestive tract—also called the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The part most commonly affected is the end part of the small intestine, called the ileum. 

In Crohn’s disease, inflammation extends deep into the lining of the affected part of the GI tract. Swelling can cause pain and can make the intestine—also called the bowel—empty frequently, resulting in diarrhea. Chronic—or long-lasting—inflammation may produce scar tissue that builds up inside the intestine to create a stricture. A stricture is a narrowed passageway that can slow the movement of food through the intestine, causing pain or cramps.

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the general name for a diseases that causes inflammation and irritation in the intestines. Crohn’s disease can be difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to other intestinal disorders, such as ulcerative colitis and other IBDs, and irritable bowel syndrome. For example, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease both cause abdominal pain and diarrhea. I have also developed anxiety, so I have another issue to deal with during inflammations now, because I have been sick for so long and been unable to receive conventional treatment. 

Because I do not have insurance, whenever I need to go and see a doctor or have a bad enough flair up that I end up in the Emergency Room, it all comes out of my pocket, or is billed to me, because I have no way of paying the thousands of dollars I have racked up, just to be seen by a doctor. In turn this has caused my debt to spiral out of control, and the saddest thing is, that before former president Bush, medical bills that you could not pay did not go against your credit. Now because I am ill, and have no health insurance, and have a chronic illness that requires constant physician supervision I am over 35K in debt, and it's all medical bills. I have never owned a credit card in all of my life. 

After all that is said and done there are still the medications that they give me to try and control my symptoms. Because of so many other medical issues, such as cancer, that run heavily in my family, they will not give me things like Humera to treat my Crohn's disease. This in turn causes them to give me a cocktail of pills, that I must take everyday in order to control my inflammations and other symptoms, so that I can have a semi productive life. I am on 3 different anti-nausea medications, 1 narcotic pain killer, 1 non-narcotic pain killer, 1 medication specifically for intentional cramping, 2 anti-anxiety medications, and 4 different prescription strength antacids such as Prilosec, and Zantac. That is a total of 12 medications, and over a dozen pills a day, because at times I have to take multiple doses. The cost without insurance is over $200 a month.  

In the end these medications only work for so long, or only so well, sometimes not at all. Then I am left struggling to control my body, my symptoms, and have a normal day. This is taxing, and in the end I have found that medical marijuana allows me to control my symptoms and my body. After over a year of constantly popping pills, and having them only work half the time, I went and got my medical marijuana license. Marijuana has been able to treat my Crohn's disease, even on some of the worst flair ups. The marijuana also gives me the ability to not be constricted by the limits of my medications, as well as free's me from having to carry a giant purse with 10-12 pill bottles in it. On top of that, I virtually do not have to take any of my medications to deal with my Crohn's disease symptoms and flair ups. Some of my medications I haven't filled, such as the narcotic pain killers, in almost a year. The cost of my medical marijuana each month, $75.

I have also included some pictures so that you can understand more completely what Crohn's disease suffers go through. One of the pictures shows inflammation caused by IBD, Crohn's disease is a form of IBD just so you do not get confused.