Sean Ahrens's Blog
http://crohnology.com/sean
http://crohnology.com/sean
I was diagnosed right after my 13th birthday in Ventura, CA. It was a confusing time then, being a budding teenager and not knowing anyone else with the illness. If I had an online community then, I know I would have felt much more relief in learning from others who had already gone through the illness. I think there is so much that we each individually learn from having Crohn's & Colitis over the years, that to not share it with others is missing a really big opportunity: for us to learn more about the cause, cure, and what treatments actually work. Let's share and change that.
When you think of someone with Crohn's Disease (or IBD in general), what do you "see" first? Do you see the person or do you see the disease? Tough question isn't it? For the longest time I cons...
You can read Steve's blog post about the interview here.
Crohn's and Colitis are caused when a person's over-reactive immune system attacks it's digestive system. This causes flares of inflammation in the digestive tract, creating problems of absorption, malnutrition, intestinal scarring, strictures, and damage. This results in unpredictable gut pain, and digestive issues of frequent and urgent use of the restroom. Crohn's & Colitis are incurable and treatments (used to quell symptoms) are often unaffordably expensive and carry hosts of serious risks. Oftentimes, surgery is necessary to remove intestine or repair intestinal complications.
Crohn's & Colitis are collectively referred to as Inflammatory Bowel Disease, or IBD--not to be confused with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), a separate and largely unrelated condition.
Read more on Wikipedia, the world's free encyclopedia.
I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease in April of 1999, at the age of 12. I'm currently 25.
I am extremely floored to be the profiled e-patient in this six-minute video on peer-to-peer healthcare. Larry Chu, MD, the organizer of Stanford Medicine X hired a very talented videographer (Theo Rigby) to shadow me for a day and interview me. I talked about what it has been like to live with Crohn's Disease, and how I was inspired to build Crohnology to connect patients with it so we can find new medical discoveries.
The video from my demo of Crohnology onstage at Stanford Medicine 2.0 has just been released. On stage (and in this video) I walk through briefly what motivated me to build Crohnology, what Crohnology is, and what impact I've seen in the lives of people who I've invited to join it.
We're starting to open the private alpha gates just a tad, and adding some new users to Crohnology.
