Three years ago, in August of 2005, after suffering with back and groin pain for nearly five months, something happened that I will never forget; a fistula that had been developing in my intestinal track opened. What is a fistula? Well, simply, a hole that develops in the small intestine after repeated attacks by the body’s immune system, which is what happens when a person suffers from Crohn’s Disease. More specifically, a fistula is a hole that develops and connects two organs together, the most common organs being, intestine to intestine, intestine to bladder, intestine to vagina, and intestine to skin.
My fistula developed between my intestine and bladder. According to the doctor as my small intestine got more and more inflamed by the repeated attacks by my immune system it got sticky and connected itself to my bladder. More specifically, and this is just from research I have done, I have learned that this stickiness isn’t really literal, and what really happens is that as the immune system attacks the organ the body also tries to heal the organ, which leads itself to repeatedly form tissue over the damaged areas, and it is that tissue that attaches the two organs together (I think an episode of House showed this happening with some cool graphics, but that was a result of a girl taking a pill full of bleach that burned a hole in her intestine, not Crohn’s Disease).
Fistulas take time and I have heard that the process can be stopped before it becomes a big problem, something that would have helped me out a lot if the first few doctors hadn’t continued to think that I simply had a prostate infection (a prostate infection at the age of 21 — maybe they should have tried to figure out why I had a prostate infection instead of just treating it since at that age prostate infections are incredibly rare). I have even heard that the omega 3 fatty acids that you can buy at the pharmacy or get by eating a lot of cold water fish can help because they act like an anti-inflammatory agent for the intestines and calm down the situation. I, however, was not aware of this and pretty much just sat around while my body took its time and slowly put a hole between my intestine and bladder, which led me to pee out fecal matter for months, something that is not only disgusting, but painful (I will never forget the time when I was trying to pee and a big chunk of something started to come out and I actually was able to pinch it and pull it free; a piece of curled up lettuce from a sandwich I had had for lunch, alas, a bit discolored from its journey, but still very easy to identify).
Having fecal matter leaking into the bladder is not a good thing and is the worst type of fistula one can get. Having to pee out fecal matter and chunks of undigested food would be bad enough, but the biggest problem is the constant infections, and the threat to the kidneys, all of which I was unaware of for nearly four months until my mother and I finally decided it was time to switch doctors.
Once one has a fistula there are a few options. My doctors started with antibiotics in hopes that it would heal the hole and calm down the inflammation enough to separate the bladder and intestine. Unfortunately this didn’t work for me, probably because of how long the fistula had gone untreated, and after several months of popping pills my doctor decided it was time to have surgery, which I underwent on June 2, 2006. It was a major surgery, one which required two surgeons, one for my bladder and one for my intestine, and the recovery was incredibly painful, but since then I have not had any problems with the Crohn’s Disease and will hopefully stay in remission for many more years to come.
