Guest Writer Harvey - Young Diagnosis

Me, Myself and My Immune System: A brief timeline of my love affair with Crohn’s Disease.

Harvey Hancock

Part ONE

Rewind to summer 2001. I’m on holiday in Portugal. I should be enjoying the sun but I am peering into the toilet. I am so impressed by the sight my 10yr-old eyes see that I call my mum in so she can view this biological magnificence. “Look Mum!” I say, “I’ve got snot in my poo!”

Fast forward one week. I’m in the car on my way home from the airport. It’s not very late but I’m sleeping again – I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Mum keeps poking me awake, which I don’t enjoy, to show me the really interesting places we’re driving through. I’m 10. I have no interest in being woken up by a prod in my chest to be told that Biddy, or Elaine, or Auntie Melanie lived in this town. She would reveal to me 11 years later that she agreed this was a poor excuse to wake a sleeping boy, but, at the time, she didn’t want to tell me that she was waking me to make sure I wasn’t dead.

Fast forward one day. I have been rushed into hospital and am being admitted into the children’s ward. Apparently such sudden weight loss and “interesting bowel movements” aren’t common in healthy young boys. I get a room to myself, but the TV has no remote; this shouldn’t really bother me given the circumstances, but watching Scooby Doo is higher on my agenda than having strangers shove thermometers in my mouth, and certainly higher than the struggle to make it to the toilet in time every 45 minutes or so. I am massively dehydrated and feverish, sleeping with a fan in each corner of the room. Everyone else wears blankets around them when they sit with me but I am still swelteringly hot in my hospital gown, giving me a more ghostly shape than I’d perhaps appreciate.

Fast forward a week. Scooby Doo is doing my bloody head in; I get it, it was the janitor. I am accustomed to having strangers shove thermometers in my mouth and my violent diarrhoea. My “interesting bowel movements” are now an hour apart – progress. Unfortunately, I am still not walking. Mum suggests I walk up to the end of the corridor and back. I take my drip stand in my hand – not only is it delaying death by dehydration, but it acts as a rather stylish walking stick. It has wheels and everything. I take mum up on her offer. I know dad is coming by with Sian and KFC (I prefer the KFC to my kid sister) and the thought of tucking into the culinary delights of Colonel Sanders over the hospital’s three-course-melange of mystery meat gets me on my feet. 

As I drag my feeble frame from one end of the corridor back to my room I consider the implications of denouncing hospital food by comparing it with KFC (which, in spite of its name, doesn’t really taste like chicken) but am distracted by a young boy bashing many toys in the play-room. Concluding that the boy and I are not kindred spirits, I decide never to walk up to that end of the corridor again. I return to my room for a quick poo and some well-deserved rest.

Fast forward 3 days. A charming doctor named Julian comes to my room. He tries to pass off his conversation as a secret between the two of us but he is basically talking to my mum. Crohn’s Disease, he explains to me, is basically my tummy deciding to speed up the digestion process to such an extent that it forgets to absorb any nutrients from my food. Moreover, he tells me that this Crohn’s Disease is causing my “interesting bowel movements”, which explains why I am able to see entire meals in my toilet bowl. KFC is quite familiar with the toilet, now – I am eating it every day because dad says that I deserve a treat. Before Julian retires for the day, he also says that I am particularly special; my liver is ballsed up, too! This doesn’t affect me at the moment but Mum says that I won’t be able to drink alcohol in the future. I believe her when she tells me I can “have a glass of champagne on my wedding day, but that’s it.”

Fast forward to the next day. I am actually feeling better. I have finished eating my KFC and it takes almost an hour and a half before my toilet acquaints itself with my dinner – I am an unwilling middle-man in this despicable love triangle. Medication has done its job and I am able to shower without sitting down. My “interesting bowel movements” are no longer interesting and they stimulate me about as much as Scooby F*!"ing Doo – so my dad brings in my Playstation and goes on the hunt for a television remote. It appears the room next door has a television remote, but the mother refuses to share it because her daughter is more ill than I am. I complain more than I should, disregarding the fact that we are kindred spirits. We’re stuck in bed like flowers that refuse to grow, away from home and missing out on the summer weather. Television is our only weapon, our only reminder that the world is having a party – and we’re not invited. Then the runs hit me at breakneck speed and I have to stop playing the philosopher. I let the girl keep the remote.

Coming up in Part 2 - going home, school and telling the other kids...