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MY ROUTE TO diagnosis began in September 2011. I had an extreme fear of the doctor, which made me hide the fact that I was sick.
My symptoms started when I was 12. I was suffering with extreme cramps, fever, diarrhoea, and blood would pass when I went to the bathroom. At age 18, I developed a perianal abscess and I was forced to go to the doctor because I couldn’t pass anything from my bowel.
On 23 December 2011, I was admitted to A&E and prepped for emergency surgery. The surgeons drained 100ml of poison from the abscess and I was told that I would have died on Christmas day if I had left it any longer.
Searching for a diagnosis
In March 2012, my weight had dropped rapidly by ten kilos. I developed a limp and when I felt a large lump in my stomach I knew it was time to seek help. Following numerous scans, the doctors found a mass the size of a melon in my psoas muscle, which was blocking all my organs.
The surgeon told me that they had three options for me and that there was no guarantee any of them would be successful. I asked him if I would live and he said, “I don’t know”. While my friends were out enjoying a busy social life, I received my last rites.
Throughout the following few weeks, I was in and out of hospital, still without a diagnosis. I had a drain fitted internally for two weeks to drain out the poison from the abscess in my abdomen.
I was discharged then re-admitted when the mass returned. I was put on a feed called TPN (Total Parental Nutrition) and marked up for two stoma bags on the morning of major surgery, which included a bowel resection. After a seven-hour surgery, I was brought back to the ICU with wires and tubes coming out of my body, but thankfully no stoma bag.
Inflammatory bowel disease
The subsequent weeks were tough. It would take me fifteen minutes to sit up, and I was unable to eat, wash or walk. My hair had started to fall out and my weight continued to drop. I was six and a half stone and couldn’t walk properly.
I started to improve daily and was sent home after being in hospital for a month. It didn’t last as I returned after a few days. My temperature spiked and it was back up to 39.5. I was admitted and put into isolation as I had contracted the hospital bug Clostridium Difficile but thankfully after three weeks, I was discharged and haven’t been admitted since.
With Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) you can look perfectly fine but feel like you’re dying on the inside, which can be frustrating because people think you’re being dramatic.
An invisible illness
It is an invisible illness. There needs to be more awareness to help people better understand the symptoms. It can affect your social life because you could be having a flare up and need to be constantly near a toilet.
It can make you very anxious. Fatigue can cause you to cancel plans last minute. You can feel so drained that you can’t leave your bed.
My life line throughout this experience has been my specialist IBD nurse. If I have any questions, need blood test sheets, prescriptions, a chat about something that is worrying me, my IBD nurse is a phone call away.
I would be extremely lost without her and I think that living with a chronic illness would be very different for me if she wasn’t around since diagnosis. There needs to be more awareness about IBD because I didn’t know what it was when I was diagnosed. I had never even heard of Crohn’s before.
I think that people living with IBD need to be made aware of support groups and the Irish Society for Colitis and Crohn’s (ISCC) because it provides huge comfort and support speaking to people who have gone or are going through the same things as you.
Clara Caslin is 18. Approximately 40,000 people live with IBD in Ireland. Please visit the ISCC website at iscc.ie to support the campaign and sign the petition.
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What a complete waste of money, this is going to be a bonanza for dodgy fas trained web designers putting up lame websites for dog groomers and hairdressers. Any business that has a genuine online business model should invest in their own business. Instead of a grant why not a low interest loan?
Joe, I have grown a business from 1 employee to 14 without any financial backing over the last few years, so I feel qualified to comment here. First off, I think this is an excellent idea – for a small business this would be a huge help. Businesses NEED to be on the web these days, but it does cost about 2500 for the most basic decent web presence (unless you are a web designer yourself). Small businesses don’t have that kind of money. It’s a vicious circle. You know you could increase sales (way more than 2500 per year) with a good web presence, but you don’t have the spare money to get one and the banks won’t lend it to you unless you are buying something tangible that they could repossess if they had to. Websites do not fall into this category.
Second, there’s nothing wrong in Fas trained people. Whenever I hear people talking down FAS training, I know they have never employed anyone who has completed a fas course. It’s an unfounded prejudice with no basis in fact, you are merely quoting “bloke down the pub says…” and it doesn’t reflect well on you. I’ve employed 4 fas trained people and they are excellent.
Having said all that, yes, I think the idea of a low cost loan, with a long repayment period is a fair compromise, though.
I agree with most of your points Andy, but I think Joe is talking about FAS trained web designers. I am a web designer myself and I agree with him that a course in web design with FAS doesn’t make you a designer. You might learn how a website can be created, mostly with outdated software and techniques, but the design part is not taught. This results in pretty ugly bloated websites.
IT Developers can not be got at the moment, lucky for them they are flat out if they are good.
Good sentiment here but poor execution again. Grants are a joke. We need on the ground assistance, less red tape and a lowering of costs for doing business.
This is like what FF did in the 90s &00s horsing out grants to build and worsened a “building bubble”. IT Developers will do as the builders did and jack up prices.
I wonder if an IT lobby had anything to do with this decision??
Oh I am getting very cynical about politics in this country.
Andy I have what I believe to be a brilliant web based business idea but cannot secure funding to get it off the ground,as a man who seems to know about such things what would you recommend my next step to be? Thanks in advance.
John, I’m working on a few ideas online myself at the present with a business partner. There are ways of doing it cheap. Drop me an email if you’re interested, darrenoceall@gmail.com
Use open source software, dip into your own pocket and start designing.
John, try kickstarter. Crowd funding is really taking off. Either that or talk to enterprise Ireland about their hpsu (high potential start up) programme. Good luck.
Why not cut real business costs for us like rates! If 2,500 was gone off my rates bill this year it would be a start! Government please start listening to small business’s, we are on our knees. Asking business’s who don’t have a shilling to spare to “match” any money invested by government is down right insulting at this moment in time, as we struggle daily to pay government induced costs. We need urgent incentives that mean something, not watery options like this were only a few will benefit!
Lets face iy it looks better for Rabbitte to be seen givng out (taxpayers) money than cutting rates and sorting out restrictive rent contracts.
Your rates aren’t set by central government they’re set by your local authority.
In the meantime at Enda’s breakfast table…eur 50 tax for every new domain plus we can create the mb tax, that works out at…
Once the money is handed over to a damn good web designer or developer then I think it’s a great idea for small business. Portfolio and good testimonials/refererrals can help you find the right developer or else It’s money down the drain.
Seconded.
People with MONEY to purchase products, thats what small business requires.
A business owner that needs to be incentivised to get online, is not a business owner that should be in business.
I just find it incredible that just 37pc of SME business in this country use the internet and now they are being subsidised by the taxpayers with a grant to do do,i have used it for years and im nearing 70,and would find life impossible without it, as would most people,as i say it just beggers belief.
sPEND IT IMPROVING THE BROADBAND NETWORKS OUTSIDE OF DUBLIN, THEN MAYBE A BUSINESS CAN ACTUALLY GET ONLINE TO SET UP A WEBSITE!
Super idea! Good move by the govt!
You really must be stupid.
Hey Brian,
Take your negative comments and name calling some place else. If you have a counter suggestion on how the govt can assist small companies I would love to hear it.
Name calling is for little boys.
Good lad Brian.
It is not name calling its an observational comment, Unlike your back Kenny and Co at all cost reductions contribution.
Kenny has his major faults however this initiative is a great one. To think it is stupid is stupid, are you stupid?
Actually you sentence does not make sense. It’s grammatically poor.
You are correct the word “reductions” should have been “ridiculous”
No counter suggestion then Brian or are you just a negative person who points out faults and doesn’t contribute?
The majority of SME’s are begging for cash flow. Free up cash to assist in this. And not thro the corrupt banking system. Companies like pay pal, visa etc take up to 6 months to forward payments to suppliers from
On line sales. Where is the working capital for even 60 days coming from. No bank over drafts or credit facilities for established SME. What chance a new start venture have???
Support for SME’s. Started a new business, promised before I came off the live register of a grant from my local development office. Went for grant to be told in April I may add that there was no funds left for that grant for the rest of the year. Disgraceful !!
As initiatives go, it’s a step in the right direction, but there is a caveat – and this is not a complaint, but a genuine concern, which I hope will be yielded by even one SME business owner.
I hope there is some vetting involved in sourcing the website designers and developers, before a lump sum is paid out. My fear is that a growing number of template-merchants and hack ‘designers’ will be running (if not sprinting) to cash in on this.
So – please vet any third party based on portfolio, testimonials, ask for ‘links’ to previous work (and how these sites are doing on Google), and an outline of their working process, discuss website warranty etc
A hint; if you receive offers of simply ‘x pages for x€’, this is selling on a template as a commodity, and ‘not’ an invested designer interested in finding a ‘solution’ for your business.
Muppet
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