Sadly, my story in none too original. I wish I could say I was the only one to have experienced incorrect and delayed diagnoses, ignorance and the struggles of living with invisible illnesses.
I was 19. Employed, sickly-sweet in love, and finally learning some degree of happiness. Life was just getting close to being good, until it wasn’t. It all seemed to happen almost as if overnight. Coincidence or not, I was prescribed iron supplements for anaemia and shortly after found myself constipated for the first time in my life. This would be the start of a slope downhill on daily laxatives and countless trips to the GP. I was increasingly tired, my periods stopped, I lost a lot of weight. My gut was giving me daily grief with additional pain and bloating, and it was having a huge impact on day to day life. I was different back then too, far more reserved and shy, so the levels of embarrassment were off the scale. First went the stable relationship, then the job, then the friends and any kind of life I had.
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