My Story

Hey there, my name is Valerie, aged eighteen living in Northern Germany. Why am I writing this blog? My life has just been changing a lot lately and I found hope in a lot of other blogs which I kind of now want to return. However, I'm also a firm believer of self cure through writing things down. And this is what I'm going to do. 

So what has changed? I got diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis on March 9th, 2014.

What's that? Well shortly said it's an autoimmune disease which means my own immune system is attacking my body - in this case my digestive system. So somehow (and seriously I have no idea why) my immune system believes that some elements of my digestive system are bad and therefore attacks them just like it would attack flu cells or a cold. The website of the GBM (GreatBowelMovement) calls it something like a civil war between two systems of my body, pretty accurate I guess. 

In fact all of this means that a part of my large bowel is kind of a always inflamed which, yes, hurts. There are phases where I feel quite good which means I'm in remission, others where I feel really really bad, having an exacerbation. This is when I'm not going to be able to get out of bed or not to be close to a restroom, preferably my own. This is when I will be in a great deal of pain and need to take analgesics in order to get rid of it again. This is when I might need to stay at the hospital. Where is the fun in that?

What does all of this mean to me? Well, honestly I don't know yet. I got my diagnosis less than a few months ago and already experienced several types of reactions: some did me very good, others not so why is mostly was a product of incomprehension. Why do I write this blog? To change this, to make people aware of inflammatory bowel diseases and what they do to affected people. To show people who are diagnosed with one of these diseases that they are not alone, because this is what I'm missing most right now. People concerned to talk about this. I feel like this issue is a lot more discussed in America or at least I found so many blogs which supported my idea of creating my own. Those blog were my anchor in the very first days, still I already discovered so many differences in terms of medication and general things between America and the place i live, Germany. Still, I'm writing in English which is not because I like it better but because I want to reach more affected people, and well UC only affects 0.2% of the population. My hope is to find other affected people, maybe even in my age.  
Because this is what I'm really missing right now. And somehow it also always seemed to me that writing things down, sometimes can make them better.