Caring for Crohn's

A blog about caring for a loved one with Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis

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Big Caring for Crohn's Announcement

Dear Readers, I am writing with some exciting and bittersweet news for you. I recently accepted a position with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America to work on its social media and public relations efforts. I have been heavily involved with CCFA for many years, first through its Take Steps community walks and then through its Team Challenge endurance training program. I greatly enjoyed my…

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Hey New Yorkers: Take Action to Ensure Restroom Access!

Hey New Yorkers: Take Action to Ensure Restroom Access!

I’ve written before about the Restroom Access Act (Ally’s Law) and how important it is to get it passed in states across the country in order to ensure that patients with inflammatory bowel disease and other illnesses are able to access employee only restrooms in stores when a public one is not available. Well New York, it’s your turn to act! In 2013, the New York State legislature attempted to…

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Living in the in between

Living in the in between

For me, the worst part of being the caregiver of someone with a chronic illness and also a patient myself is living in the “in between”- the grey area straddling the line of good and bad, healthy and sick. I am a bit of a control freak (I know, shocking) and get very agitated when I can’t anticipate what’s to come and can’t adequately plan for the future. Ask anyone who knows me- I am the captain…

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Introducing New Caring for Crohn's & UC Contributor!

Keeping a blog current takes a lot of work and content. As many of you know, I’ve had a lot of trouble writing as often as I should in order to keep the blog up to date. After a lot of thought, I decided that I could use help writing on the blog and interacting with Caring for Crohn’s readers.

So I am incredibly excited to announce that my friend Rosanne will be joining Caring for Crohn’s as a…

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World IBD Day 2015- A Day of Thanks

Today, May 19, marks the observance of World IBD Day, a day led by patient organizations across four continents to raise awareness and educate the public about inflammatory bowel diseases. Around the world, more than 5 million people live with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, two debilitating digestive diseases that have detrimental effects on patients physically, emotionally, financially,…

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#ThisIsIBD: Craig

Today is the last day of Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Week and, as I look back over all the stories that have been shared over the past seven days, I am in awe of how strong the Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis patients in my life are. Each story is unique but what they all have in common is that they refuse to let their disease run their life, no matter how difficult living with the diseases can…

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#ThisIsIBD: Rosanne & Sean

Today’s #ThisIsIBD stories come from two incredible people- Rosanne and Sean. Rosanne and I met through our volunteer work with the Greater NYC Chapter of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America. She’s a great advocate and a Disney blogger in her spare time.

Sean is the founder of Crohnology, a social network for patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Through Crohnology, a…

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#ThisIsIBD: Ben

Today, my friend Ben shares his #ThisIsIBD story. Ben married my good college friend several years ago and this past summer, ran the Jamestown Half Marathon with us, his first race ever. Way to go!

Ben, 29, Crohn’s disease

During the fall semester of my senior year of college, I was studying abroad in South America. After about a month, I started having severe stomach pain and diarrhea. I thought…

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#ThisIsIBD: Laura

Today’s #ThisIsIBD story is from Laura. Laura is one of my good friends from Team Challenge who, despite having Crohn’s disease, is a speed demon half-marathoner many times over (she ran the Jamestown Half Marathon last year in 1:41, a personal record for her).

Laura, 30, Crohn’s disease

I was first diagnosed with Crohn’s disease via a colonoscopy in November of 2006 at the age of 22. Just three…

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#ThisIsIBD Stories

#ThisIsIBD Stories Part 2

Today’s #ThisIsIBD story comes from Jeffrey . Jeffrey is another IBD blogger and sits on the board of the Intense Intestines Foundation.

Jeffrey, 41, Crohn’s disease

I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in the 1980’s and went through years of being sick but just wanting to feel better and live my life. I didn’t know much about the disease, and, due to a lack of resources and motivation, I didn’t…

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#ThisIsIBD Stories

When I sought out stories for my recent Huffington Post piece to illustrate life with IBD, I received an incredible amount of personal stories from people living with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, too many to fit into the 1,000 word limit I had for my piece. In observance of Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Week, I am going to share the additional stories on my blog throughout the week.

Fi…

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#ThisIsIBD

This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post; however the stories included below are the full versions and not the ones that appear externally.

December 1 marks the start of Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Week, an important week within the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) community to bring attention to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis(UC), two debilitating digestive diseases that…

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CCFA CEO Addresses Hot Button IBD Issues

There are many hot button issues related to inflammatory bowel disease and when I met with Rick Geswell, president and CEO of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, I took the opportunity to address two of them- the use of the word “cure” related to ulcerative colitis patients, and mortality associated with these diseases.

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Microbiome & IBD: The future of treatment?

Microbiome & IBD: The future of treatment?

When I sat down with Rick Geswell, president & CEO of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) in September, I knew the conversation would focus primarily around CCFA’s Genetics and Microbiome Initiative. I had seen the video that CCFA put out but beyond that, knew very little about the two initiatives and definitely had no idea how microbiota are linked to Crohn’s disease and…

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Reblog: Ileostomy, colostomy, urostomy: What’s the difference?

My fabulous friend Stephanie at the Stolen Colon is one smart cookie. Her most recent post about the different types of ostomies is so informative that I needed to share it with you all. You can view the original post here or by reading below.

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Meet Rick Geswell, CCFA President & CEO

Meet Rick Geswell

As many of you know, I am a big supporter of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA). I am an alumnus of its Take Steps and Team Challenge programs, sat on the board of its Connecticut Chapter, and I am currently helping its New York City and Fairfield/WestchesterChapters develop communications strategies. I believe that they are the organization that has the most amount of clout in…

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A conversation about pooping

A conversation about pooping

I know that I have been radio silent on the blog for several months now, and I am sorry for that. Life has gotten very busy and the blog has taken a backseat to everything else. But I am still looking at the comments and am involved with the online IBD community- just to a lesser extent.

Two quick things before I get into this post-

New Huffington Post piece is up- World IBD Day: It’s Not All…

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