Living with a chronic illness, like Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, can affect not only your physical health but also your mental health and emotional well-being. In fact, the rate of anxiety and depression among IBD patients is two to three times higher than that of the general ...

Living with IBD can complicate relationships with your family, friends, and significant others, both positively and negatively. There are several ways in which your disease can impact your relationships: Your family members, friends, and significant others become your caregivers when...

I didn’t know much about Crohn’s disease before I met Darian and only Googled what it was. However, I feel that we learned how to be prepared early in our relationship for how Crohn’s could, and would, affect us both.  Darian and I were dating for six months when I had a sudden fa...

Today is National Wear Red Day, which helps bring awareness to heart disease, and the start of Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week. Now, when you think of Crohn’s disease, you don’t typically think of heart disease also. But I have experienced both. I was born with a congenital hear...

Two months after we started dating, Dan was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. He was extremely sick – underweight, malnourished, and experiencing crippling symptoms. The first three years after diagnosis, Dan was on medications that did little to quell his disease activity. I watched him ...

As a patient advocacy organization, the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation is committed to improving the quality of life for patients and finding cures for IBD so that one day, we will be able to close our doors for good. To fund our cause, we raise money from multiple sources, in or...

I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at age 20, although I should have been diagnosed many years earlier. My disease progressed quickly, and I had two emergency surgeries and multiple hospital visits in my first year after diagnosis. College was extremely tough for me as I couldn’t...

Have you ever noticed that your quality of treatment in a hospital changes based on the time of day and/or the day of the week that you are there? It’s true; the care you receive during regular hours on a weekday can vary drastically from the weekend. This is often referred to as the we...

For many years now— and certainly the last six as a staff member of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation – I have heard many a tale of what it’s like to have a colonoscopy. Frequently those anecdotes include the unpleasantness of the prep and the joys of propofol. I am not a Crohn’s dis...

After dealing with months of symptoms, I was finally diagnosed in with Crohn’s disease in February of 2017. Once I was diagnosed, I started meeting other IBD patients and getting involved with the IBD community but had never been to a Take Steps walk until I joined the Foundation as the...