Katharina Buczek
According to the CDC, approximately 3.1 million U.S. adults– or a little over one percent of the population– have been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Included under this IBD umbrella is Crohn’s disease– a chronic condition that causes irritation and inflammation of the digestive tract.
After being diagnosed, therapeutic options such as medication may be a helpful treatment course for many. For up to seventy-five percent of people with Crohn’s disease, though, surgery is eventually needed.
This was the reality that twenty-year-old Paula Sojo had to face just last year. She was only nineteen-years-old at the time and remembered spending six months laid up in a hospital bed because of Crohn’s disease.
Then, during the tail end of her stay, Paula was given her first ostomy bag. An ostomy surgery is a life-saving procedure that allows bodily waste to exit the body into a pouch located on the abdomen, known as an ostomy bag.
Despite this new accessory giving Paula her health back, though, she could not help but feel ashamed.
After all, she was sitting amongst patients who were decades older than her and thinking about how she was probably the only teenage girl walking around with an ostomy bag.
So, this overwhelming feeling understandably led Paula to feel depressed, isolated and embarrassed about having Crohn’s disease.
TikTok; pictured above is Paula in a video
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