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I remember frantically telling my first graders, “Hold on, Mrs. Campbell needs to turn her microphone and camera off really quick” and I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom. There, in my office, I threw up.

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For seven years, I struggled with ulcerative colitis. It affected every aspect of my life. With colitis, you can have good days and bad days.

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Being an 18-year-old girl and hearing “you need emergency surgery to give you an ileostomy bag” was really difficult. That sentence has and will stay in my head permanently.

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I knew something was wrong in my early 20s. It was hard enough worrying about fitting in with the popular sorority girls in college.

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The mouth sores, the joint pain, severe fatigue, nausea, severe abdominal pain, pain while eating, pain while drinking, pain without eating for a whole day, loosing blood every time I went to the bathroom… How could I learn to love…

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Our physical health directly impacts our mental health, and the truth is that we need our mental health in order to get our gut under control. You cannot have one without the other.

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The first two years of having Ulcerative Colitis are a blur and lucid all at once.

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What is Crohn’s Disease? According to the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease that causes chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. What are the symptoms?