Freshman year of college is supposed to be a time of new discoveries, new friends, and new adventures. It shouldn't be a time filled with constant pain, multiple surgeries, and a continually worsening quality of life. Unfortunately for Brian, this was the case, as Crohn's Disease began to take over his life; this is his story.

"Crohn's Disease-Unexpected Diagnosis: Brian's Story"



Brian:



"Hi, my name is Brian Greenberg, I'm 28 years old, and I suffer from Crohn's Disease. I started noticing it in high school really, when the pain started settling in a little bit more, and to be honest, like every high school student, I used it to get out of school every now and then, but then once the pain started to get a little bit more extreme towards my senior year, I realized that something serious was happening, I had to understand it more, did a lot of reading on it, and realized that it was going to be something, that I was going to have to adjust my lifestyle to a little bit.



The worst part of my Crohn's Disease actually hit me my freshman year of college, I was away at the University of Rhode Island, and I actually got my first rectal infection, Once that set in, I had a period of 19 months, where I had 13 different surgeries to drain the infection. I was basically going through a cycle where I would run a fever for a week, drive home for a week, have a minor surgery, recover for a week, and then the infection would start again the 3rd week.



It was a non-stop roller-coaster, the pain was horrible, I would have drainage that would be uncontrollable, and the infection were just taking over my life with high fevers constantly, I tried to battle through my freshman year of college, but it was almost impossible on a day to day battle, and I just decided to have my ascending and transcending colons removed, and everything seemed to be really good. After about 5 or 6 years of remission the bottom kinda dropped out, and that's when the disease really started to affect my sigmoid colon and my descending colon, where it actually started in, and the disease basically took over my life.



I was going to the bathroom upwards of 20 times a day, and in November of 2009, I decided to have my second resection, where they removed another 6-7 inches of my colon. Unfortunately after my second resection in November 2009, my symptoms didn't improve, I was continuing to go the bathroom constantly, the pain was on a daily basis, and my quality of life, was not normal enough to live like everybody else."