Last night I had the honor of doing a Facebook Live with Dr. Tiffany Taft (Psychogastroenterology, Northwestern University) and Amber Tresca (About IBD, IBD Moms) in conjunction with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. We discussed all the emotions around COVID-19 from fear and anxiety to grief and loss and how we can cope best with stay-at-home and social distancing order in light of the challenges being presented to us in recent times. Hope you all found this discussion informative in learning some coping skills around the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and living with IBD. For additional resources and updates on COVID-19 and IBD, please visit the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation Coronavirus…
- acceptance, advocacy, awareness, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Crohn's, J-Pouch, living with IBD, Mental Health, Ostomy, Ulcerative Colitis
- acceptance, advocacy, Body Positivity, Colorectal Surgery, Crohn's, living with IBD, Mental Health, Ostomy, Self-image, stigma
“I Had an Ostomy—and It Changed My Life”
For these people living with Crohn’s disease, ostomy surgery made everything from the ordinary to the extraordinary possible. By Jennifer Rainey Marquez Excerpt taken from HealthCentral. Article originally published in HealthCentral on November 27th, 2019: https://www.healthcentral.com/article/ostomy-crohns-patient-stories “I feel more ‘myself’ than I have in years.” ~Tina Aswani Omprakash, 36, New York City “As an Indian American, getting an ostomy was so culturally taboo that I waited until I was near death’s door to finally have the surgery. I was told nobody would marry me, and I was very afraid that I’d be discriminated against. To my surprise, my ostomy didn’t just save my life—it made me feel alive again! Not only…
- Ableism, acceptance, Caregiving, coping with flares, Crohn's, Dating & Relationships, living with IBD, Mental Health, Ostomy, Ulcerative Colitis
The Other Side of Crohn’s: Caregiving
By Anand Omprakash Originally published by the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation on December 3rd, 2019: https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/anands-story “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” – Robert A Heinlein For anyone who has been in a loving relationship – romantic, familial, or other – I hope this quote resonates. Love truly is the condition in which another’s happiness is crucial to your own. In fact, that is the whole point of a loving relationship, is it not? This aspect of love very much applies to relationships in which we are not just partners, but also caregivers. A caregiver is one who takes on…
- acceptance, advocacy, awareness, Colorectal Surgery, Crohn's, living with IBD, Mental Health, Minority Health, Ostomy, Ulcerative Colitis, Women's Health
~OYC Trailblazers~ Mollie’s Story: Living la Vida Latina with Ulcerative Colitis & an Ostomy
By Mollie Tinnin My journey with chronic illness began my senior year of high school after a violent assault left me hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. At the time, I received eight units of blood and during the treatment of the injuries I had sustained, the physicians discovered I had ulcers in my intestines. The treatment of both these injuries and my ulcerative colitis have been complicated in that they both are intertwined and affect each other even until this day. I’ve tried several medications, such as Mesalamine, but with the scar tissue and the ulcers both being in the same location, medication has not been very effective for me. Surgically,…
- awareness, coping with flares, Crohn's, living with IBD, Mental Health, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis, World IBD Day
~OYC Trailblazers~ Harman’s Story from India
By Harman Singh Randhawa My battle with ulcerative colitis began in 2003. I was 20 years old and in my 2nd year of studying Engineering. By the time the diagnosis came through, I had already lived with pain and inordinate trips to bathroom for more than 6 months. Ignoring my painful symptoms and the discomfort that came with it, I kept delaying getting a thorough checkup. I started experiencing bloody diarrhea for many days. Finally, it was my sister who decided that the situation had gotten out of hand and drove me to PGI Hospital in Chandigarh in Punjab, India. I underwent a few tests and when the blood test…
- acceptance, awareness, Colorectal Surgery, coping with flares, Crohn's, living with IBD, Mental Health, PTSD, Stigma, Ulcerative Colitis, Women's Health
World PTSD Day 2019: The Faceless Woman
In honor of World PTSD Day today, I release a poem I wrote some weeks ago surrounding the medical trauma I’ve faced as a Crohn’s patient. This poem is not for the faint of heart so I will not be offended if you cannot read it. Post-traumatic stress is a term that’s often thrown around lightly but it has serious implications for people who have been in battle for their country, for their lives and against chronic illnesses. Everyday is a minefield with an array of flashbacks and memories that keep us from living our best lives. I urge you all to learn more and to respond to those who…
- acceptance, advocacy, awareness, coping with flares, Crohn's, living with IBD, Mental Health, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis, Women's Health
I’m Chronically Ill & Depressed; So What?
You might be looking at this photo and thinking, “Oh, Tina looks like she’s having a great time enjoying beautiful weather in the park.” Can you tell an hour before this photo was taken, hubs struggled to get me to leave our home? Can you tell I had been curled up in bed crying? Can you tell it was next to impossible for me to get myself ready and out of bed that afternoon? NOPE. The truth is photos on social media and the Internet, in general, can be so deceiving. What you see here is a woman with Crohn’s and 37520572 other ailments smiling in a park because that’s…
- acceptance, awareness, Body Positivity, Colorectal Surgery, Crohn's, Fistulizing Disease, living with IBD, Mental Health, Ostomy, Self-image, Ulcerative Colitis, Women's Health, World IBD Day
Why My IBD Scars Make Me Proud
How I learned to love what once made me shudder. By Tina Aswani Omprakash Originally published by Everyday Health on 5/17/2019: https://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/my-health-story/why-my-ibd-scars-make-me-proud/ This year’s World IBD Day theme is “Making the Invisible Visible,” and I’ve been taking a long hard look at what that means to me. The reality is that living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has meant donning an invisibility cloak for most of my adult life. But over the past 14 months, I’ve striven to make my invisible illness visible. From sharing my story widely on social media to using my platform to educate others on how IBD wreaks havoc on patients like me, I’ve come to realize that visibility is necessary for…
- advocacy, awareness, caregivers, Crohn's, living with IBD, Mental Health, Minority Health, Ulcerative Colitis
Happy World IBD Day from Digestive Disease Week (DDW)!
Last weekend, a number of us celebrated World IBD Day from DDW in San Diego, CA. We advocates sat in sessions and conferences brainstorming the best ways in which to address the gaps in IBD care and bring those ideas forward to doctors leading the quest to improve our care. We discussed so many topics from mental health to support and caregiving in addition to sexual health and intimacy. We talked to Drs. Aline Charabaty & Neilanjan Nandi about how to take those topics forward to the larger community and have the tough conversations with our own providers. All in all, we, as a team, collaborated to bring together a…
- acceptance, advocacy, awareness, Crohn's, living with IBD, Mental Health, Minority Health, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis, Women's Health
As a Chronically-Ill Brown Woman, Here’s Why I Share My Survival Story
I had the honor of attending the 2019 HealtheVoices conference in Dallas, TX, as a patient advocate who was selected to attend from a group of 400+ applicants. Here are my impressions of the conference theme for this year, “A Little Heart Can Do Big Things” from the perspective of a chronically-ill brown patient advocate: https://www.oshihealth.com/my-survival-story/. Originally published by Oshi Health, Inc., on April 29th, 2019. Written by Tina Aswani Omprakash Please feel free to leave comments and feedback. I would love to hear your thoughts as always.