Born in Toronto, Canada I spent the first 18 years of my life happy and healthy. Then something terrible happened. After a short vacation to the Caribbean, I fell ill and was diagnosed with Crohn’s-Colitis shortly thereafter. From age 19 I spent over two decades trying to cope with this debilitating disease of the gut as best as possible; nevertheless, I could not find relief and the symptoms only worsened with each passing year.
For 22 years I was treated the only way the doctors knew how: with conventional pharmaceuticals. These products had varying degrees of short term efficacy; however, the overall trajectory of my wellbeing and quality of life was downward. Over this period I was prescribed just about every drug used to treat IBD including years of exposure to steroids (prednisone and budesonide), antibiotics (cipro and flagil), immunosuppressants (purinethol), NSAIDs, and even double dose chemotherapy-derived bioligics (remicade/infleximab). Despite various combinations of drug therapy, the state of disease continued to worsen until I was hospitalized in 2018 and told there was no choice but to undergo a major surgery.
An MRI revealed three long, separate strips of small bowel that hd become strictured. Based on the findings, the doctors concluded that the three strictures were made up of mostly scar tissue due to over two decades of chronic inflammation caused by active Crohn’s disease. My situation was dire. Almost everything I ate would get blocked in the strictures and cause an obstruction. The seemingly endless pain would be followed by hours of vomiting, dehydration and exhaustion. This went on for several months and I was eventually fired from my place of work due to absence.
Under my GI’s guidance at the time we scheduled an elective triple resection surgery and I had a little under one month to go until the big day. In addition to being malnourished, exhausted, anxious and depressed, I was also terrified. My GI could not guarantee the surgery would buy me years of quiet. She could not guarantee the points at which the small bowel would be reconnected during surgery would not become scarred, thus creating new strictures and requiring additional surgeries. In fact she said the vast majority of IBD patients that did resection surgery would ultimately need more surgery down the road, potentially leading to short bowel disease.
With three weeks until surgery, I began scouring the internet day and night for a way out. I was convinced there had to be an alternative path, that surgery was not necessarily inevitable, and that even scar tissue in the gut could resolve when treated properly. And that’s when caught a lucky brake. A chance encounter with a professor of oncology helped change the path I was on.
He spoke to me about the human gut microbiome and its integral role in proper digestion function, immune regulation and even its connection to the brain and emotions. In over twenty years of being treated by top GIs in the field, I had never once heard anything about the gut microbiome, and almost instantly I became fascinated with the subject. Could a neglected and dysbiotic microbiome really be restored to a healthy state after decades of neglect and injury due to poor diet and exposure to immune suppressing medications? When restored to a healthy state, could it even help resolve multiple scar strictures in the small bowel? Could this be the magic bullet I was looking for in order to dodge the surgery I was not mentally or physically ready to do?
When the Only Possibility Left is the Impossible
I made some radical changes to my diet, outlook and lifestyle and within one week of strict adherence to the protocol I had put together, I started to feel an improvement. Symptoms were waning; less gut pain and blockages, less vomiting, fewer bouts of bloody diarrhea each day. Stools became more formed, the color began changing, less frequency and more regularity in my bowel movement were all noticeable. Though I was still in a very delicate situation, the improvements were measurable.
WIth two weeks to go before the surgery, my GI called me and said I had to stop all medication as I couldn’t undergo such a serious procedure with a suppressed immune system. I told her about what I had discovered and my holistic protocol, which mostly hinged on diet and nutrition, but she scoffed at the idea that this could resolve my three strictures. She explicitly told me to stop reading nonsense online as it was anecdotal and unproven and that surgery was my only option. She urged me not to mess around as my disease condition at the time was very severe, even life threatening due to potential gut perforation and sepsis. She even went as far as saying it was my responsibility to my children to undergo the surgery so that I could be a functioning parent. Despite the heavy pressure and guilt, I told her I wanted to defer the surgery for one month in order to give the newly discovered approach to treating IBD more time to work. Furious, she hung up on me and I never heard back from her. Nevertheless, I was grounded in my decision. For the first time in my life I decided to listen to my gut and continued on the path I had chosen.
The Long Path to Recovery
Nearly five years later I am now able to eat as much high fiber plant based whole foods as I like, including raw fruits and vegetables, legumes and more. This diet was unthinkable five years ago, as the high fiber foods would have caused endless blockages in my small bowel and probably would have sent me for an emergency surgery. In the end I did not undergo the triple resection surgery that was recommended by my GI, and I never went back on meds either. It was a slow and tricky journey to recovery, with many falls along the way, but in the process I learned so much about the disease, my own biology, and ultimately myself.
Today I work as a self-employed copywriter, and when time permits, I reach out to people on various IBD support groups on social media in order to help share the knowledge I acquired on my own healing journey over the last few years.
As the saying goes, before you can heal the world you must first heal yourself. I hope my personal story of self-healing inspires other to believe in themselves.
With Love,
Paul