Period: March 2012 - May 2012
Within a week of my Crohn's diagnosis, I called the IBD nurse and left a voicemail, explaining that I was told to call if I needed a prescription. I waited by the phone all day. As the following day was Saturday, I had to wait until Monday to visit the GP. I explained that, now they had told me it was Crohn's, surely there was some medication they could prescribe to help with my symptoms?
The GP contacted the IBD nurse directly and I was put on a 3-month course of the steroid Budesonide. In May I had the delightful experience of my first colonoscopy. If you have never had a colonoscopy, let me tell you that the actual procedure is a doddle. It is even quite fun watching your bowel on a screen. What isn't fun is wasting an entire day of your life drinking copious amounts of what I can only describe as drain cleaner, to clear your bowels completely.
When I arrived for the procedure the matron was lovely and explained that, as my inflammation was in the small intestine there was a high chance they might not be able to get the camera inside, but they would try to get a biopsy sample at least. To be honest this news came as a bit of a shock to me. I had been anticipating the colonoscopy as the beginning of the end to this hell. I had been on steroids for a few weeks and, apart from making me increasingly prone to rage they did not seem to be having any significant effect. To find out that they may not even be able to confirm it was Crohn's disease was a big disappointment and I was annoyed that the consultant had not taken a few minutes out of his day to explain this to me previously.
When I had recovered, my Mum and I were taken in to a tiny room with a desk and a nurse. When she sat there and told me that my colonoscopy was clear and the most likely cause for my symptoms was IBS, I just wanted to cry. Before I could scream at her that I did not have IBS my Mum politely informed her that she was wrong and that we already knew it was not IBS. Instead of listening, she told us WE were wrong and started blathering about peppermint and fibre. Knowing my temper was already close to the surface because of the steroids. I did the only thing I could and politely stood up, thanked her for her time and took my paperwork, which had been sitting in front of her.
It was not until I arrived home and read the notes that I discovered they had not even been able to access my small intestine after all. At the top of the page it read quite clearly "CT scan shows inflammation of the terminal ileum" and at the bottom it stated just as clearly that they had been unable to access the terminal ileum. They had been able to take a biopsy, but this turned out to be too fragile for examination. In my anger I fired off an email of complaint to the hospital about the nurse. To their credit they did contact me within a couple of weeks, but once I had simmered down I decided to let it go.
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