One evening, at the beginning of his senior year of high school, John Christian was rushed to the emergency room. He was in extreme pain. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong - he seemed to be in otherwise good health. His parents were frightened, unsure why their young, healthy, fit son was in such pain.
The surgeon on call decided to perform an emergency surgery, cutting John Christian open only to find an ulcer the size of a grapefruit on his intestines. The ulcer had burst open - opening a hole in his intestines - and leaking bile into his abdominal cavity. Acting quickly and effectively the surgeon performed a partial colectomy, removed the ulcer, and saved John Christian’s life.
Over the next several months, John Christian slowly recovered, aching from the pain, but desperate to return to normal life. It was three months later, however, when multiple gastroenterologists verified that he had Crohn’s Disease: an autoimmune disease for which there was no known cure. This surgery and pain wasn’t going to be a one time problem. John Christian began to fear that Crohn’s disease might prevent him from living a normal life.
After graduating high school, John Christian attended Covenant College in northern Georgia not far from Chattanooga, Tennessee. While college has unique challenges that come with living independently, exercising newfound freedoms, and spending time studying and with friends, Crohn’s disease made his life extremely difficult. John Christian faced what most students in chronic pain from active Crohn’s face: excruciating daily pains, depression and anxiety, difficulty handling stressful coursework, and debts from medications and college combined. Even worse, this life-altering struggle was largely hidden from view; most of his close friends and professors did not know his pain and the daily challenges that came with it.
In the more than 10 years since John Christian was diagnosed with Crohn’s, he has had more than 5,400 painful flare-ups, required over $1,000,000 of medical intervention (surgeries, daily pills and bi-weekly injections), undergone 10+ colonoscopies and endoscopies, and, at times, faced intense anxiety and depression.
In the past three years, John Christian’s disease began to slowly let up and he has entered into remission. Having wrestled with the difficulty of life with Crohn’s, John Christian determined that no college student should face Crohn’s or colitis alone. He launched Project Crohn’s in 2022 to provide the support his younger self so desperately needed.
Today, Project Crohn’s is stepping in to be a light for young adults who are in a similar place to where John Christian was only a few years ago.
