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October 2004
I am an eighteen
year old girl who lives in Ottawa
but, attends post secondary schooling in North Bay. My life involves schooling, my family, my friends and my boyfriend. Now my boyfriend is a nineteen year old male who attends post secondary schooling at the University of Ottawa and has a lot going for
him. He is a very intelligent and determined young man with great initiative to succeed. There is just one thing that is holding
him back from reaching his full potential and that is the fact that he is ill.
Over the past
couple of months his illness has progressed and has prevented him from doing every day activities that he normally enjoys.
During these past few months he has been in and out of emergency rooms, has not
eaten and has not gone anywhere besides staying in his house. This incident got
so bad that the once never absent employee had to quit his job. After the many
trips to the hospital and the severe pain that he has been suffering from for as long as he could remember his determinism
finally prevailed and he started talking to many different doctors. These doctors
lead to specialists and those specialists lead to some simple medical tests.
Now that all
these tests have been done and with all the tests inconclusive toward his ailment he is at a point where he no longer knows
what he, himself can do. So everyday he wakes up in pain, is afraid to eat or
drink, and is petrified of another severe and constant attack that had happened a few months ago.
When he goes to the
hospital they perform the normal procedures such as check his blood pressure and blood work. While he is in the emergency
room he is in so much pain that they give him a dose of morphine and send him home. For
what? So he can just go through all that gut wrenching pain again?
As his girlfriend,
I can honestly say that watching someone that I love scream and cry because of the pain they are in each day is not the easiest
thing to do. To tell you the truth, I do not know how he can live through that
much pain everyday of his life because any normal person would give up, hit depression and if not commit suicide, at least
have thoughts of doing so. Even though he has made it this far with the pain, it is now starting to affect him as he is constantly
tired and is basically giving up. The only question you get out of him is, ‘why?’
‘Why can’t this stop?’ And the only category he is ever regarded
as to medical professionals is ‘he is a patient suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome.’ What can I do? I can
only just be there for my boyfriend.
July 2005
Here we are a little less than a year later and my boyfriend prevailed, not to cure his categorical stigma of a patient
suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but to a twenty year old male able to leave his home, travel outside Ottawa (to see
me in North Bay J), and continue without regard to his IBS in university. He was determined and was unwilling to
give-in or give-up. So what has happened? He continued to visit specialist after specialist, from general-practitioners to
his psychologist and gradually declined visits as he gained some stability. I am not here to provide the answer for IBS, or
the medications a sufferer ought to take. I am just here to say to all the love ones of the sufferers of IBS to keep supporting
the ones you love. And to all the IBS sufferers, you have support from the ones you love.
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