A guy with Crohn's disease explains what it actually is: inflammation and sores in the intestines that cause severe pain, frequent bowel movements, and fatigue. He gets Remicade infusions every five weeks and has to stick to a strict diet to avoid flare-ups, which means bringing his own food to social events. It won't shorten his lifespan.
Whenever you watch this video, I'm gonna actually be at the beach. I'm literally making like 7, 8 videos today, so yeah, I have no idea what order this is gonna go up in. And in my desperate quest for topics in order to maintain my daily uploading schedule, I thought of talking about Crohn's disease because it's something I have, obviously, or I wouldn't be talking about it. I've done a video on it before, but that was a really long time ago and I've doubled my subscriber count. Since then, so, you know, why not do another one? And another thing is, you know, Crohn's isn't the worst thing ever. I mean, there are people who have way worse diseases. You know, you can have cancer and have to go through radiation, all that annoying things. There are worse things than Crohn's out there, which is why sometimes I'm a little bit hesitant to talk about it or complain about it, because other people deal with way worse. If you don't know what Crohn's is, it's pretty much my small or large intestines, one of them has something wrong with them, and they— the bacteria is messed up in it, just there's sores on it, something's wrong with my small or large intestine. And whenever I eat certain foods, it agitates it, and if it gets agitated, then I have, like, enormous stomach pain that's really unbearable, and then I go to the bathroom a lot. Now, there are a lot of little problems Crohn's causes you, like fatigue, and you're just, like, really low on energy a lot of times, but the biggest thing, obviously, is the diet. You have to eat certain foods every single week of every single year. It gets really repetitive, but you have to eat those certain foods so your stomach doesn't get all messed up and you're not in constant pain 24/7. And it's a really small, strict diet, or at least mine is. It's different for everyone. And that makes it a little bit difficult to socialize and stuff like that. Or not really difficult to socialize, just, you know, a lot of the things you do with your friends and whenever you hang out, it's, you know, usually revolves around food, which is where it's hard for me because sometimes I end up bringing my own PB&J when we're eating at fast food or things like that, just because I don't want to be in stomach pain, or I've already eaten something kinda, you know, that I shouldn't have eaten, and I can't afford to eat anything else. And so I'll— you know what I'm saying? Pretty much it just sucks all the fun out of food. I mean, eating food is a huge part of your life. You spend so much time doing it. You're always trying new foods. It tastes good. But with Crohn's, you know, you don't really like the food you eat all the time. And it's just like, you can't always try new stuff. You like pretty much eat the same thing. It gets kind of repetitive. And you really have to like sit down and mentally process, how's this going to affect me? Do I want to feel bad tomorrow? Can I afford to eat this? It just takes all the fun out of food, which really sucks because, you know, eating food and just having fun with food is like a huge part of your life, and that just gets sucked away when you get Crohn's. Like, for real, if I didn't have Crohn's, I'd go to Food Lion, I'd buy 12 boxes of cereal, and I'd eat a different box of cereal every morning. Like, there's so many types of cereal out there, and like, I can't eat cereal anymore, and I watch so many people eat it all the time, and I just like, there's so much cereal out there. I would just eat a different type of cereal every morning. That'd be so awesome instead of freaking eating chicken and rice or chicken and sweet potato. So that's pretty much the diet in a nutshell. Another thing that comes with Crohn's is the medicine you have to take. I'm on Remicade, if you have any idea what that is. I highly doubt you do. And pretty much every 5 weeks I go to the hospital, they jab me with a needle, and I sit there for 4 hours and it pumps medicine into my bloodstream. And no, that's not a steroid. Everyone's always like, "Oh, so you're on steroids?" No, it's not a steroid. I swear. That's like— I don't understand why everyone always thinks that. And without going into too much details and, you know, making this video super long for no reason, That's Crohn's in a nutshell, a super strict diet along with medicine. And the way the medicine works, like, the week after I get it, I feel pretty good. Like, I feel like a normal person. But as time goes on, it slowly wears off and I start to feel worse and worse. And like, the last week of the medicine is when, you know, I don't really feel that good, and I have to be really strict on my diet because anything pretty much will agitate me and, you know, cause me pain and stuff like that. So it kind of sucks only feeling good a couple weeks out of every month, but You know, you gotta live with it. Nothing I can do about it. And I guess I should also mention this: I'm not gonna die early because of it. I'll live just as long as I would if I didn't have it. Thought I might as well throw that in there, but that's pretty much Crohn's in a nutshell, in case any of you were wondering. If not, I'm not quite sure why you'd watch it this far. And that's the video.
