There tend to be more women than men who share their journey with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis). The reasons are challenging to uncover, but what’s clear is that more can be done to raise the visibility of men living with an IBD, ostomy, or other digestive condition. My guest is Jordan William Henry Aggen, otherwise known as Crohn’s Trooper. Jordan emphasizes the importance of open communication, pre-planning, and finding support from friends, family, and social media to cope with the disease.

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Concepts discussed on this episode:

• Which is Nerdier: Star Wars or Star Trek?

Find Jordan William Henry Aggen at:

• Facebook: @JWHA2011
• Instagram: @crohnstrooper

Find Amber J Tresca at:

• AboutIBD.com: About IBD
• Verywell: Verywell Health
• Facebook: @aboutIBD
• Twitter: @aboutIBD
• Pinterest: @aboutibd
• Instagram: @about_IBD

Find Mac Cooney (mix, sound design, and theme music) at:

• Facebook: @maccooneycomposer
• Instagram: @maccooneycomposer
• Web: Cooney Studio
• YouTube: @MacCooneyComposer
• Theme music, IBD Dance Party, is from ©Cooney Studio.

These show notes may contain affiliate links. If you choose to purchase after clicking a link, Mal and Tal Enterprises, LLC may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

[Music: IBD Dance Party]

Amber Tresca (00:05):
I’m Amber Tresca, and this is About IBD. I’m a medical writer and patient educator who lives with a j-pouch due to ulcerative colitis. It’s my mission to educate people living with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis about their disease and to bring awareness to the patient journey. Welcome to episode 154.

(00:21):
As you may have noticed, in many spaces, there are more women than men who are sharing their journey with IBD, and this podcast is no different despite my best efforts. In fact, I often see female care partners advocating on behalf of their male relatives with IBD in order to find support, advice and information. For these reasons, I am always encouraged when I see men who share their IBD journey online. Men and women are affected by IBD in roughly even numbers, but there are some differences. For instance, boys are more likely to be diagnosed as children than girls are. Men are also more likely to be diagnosed later in life in their 50s or 60s, and men have a higher risk of developing a liver disease called primary sclerosis cholangitis.

(00:59):
My guest is Jordan Henry William Aggen, otherwise known as Crohn’s Trooper. Jordan is an educator and he tells us how he manages the signs and symptoms of IBD while at work. He also gives his best advice for other men living with chronic illness, and it’s really pretty great. Plus we take some time to get nerdy about a particular space opera and how Jordan has connected that passion to charity work in his community and beyond.

(01:25):
Jordan, thank you so much for coming on About IBD.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (01:28):
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Amber Tresca (01:30):
Oh, it is my pleasure. Jordan, the first thing I’m going to ask you is if you would give an introduction, so would you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jordan William Henry Aggen (01:40):
My full name is Jordan William Henry Aggen. I’m a teacher by trade. I’ve been doing that for the past 11 years. When I’m not in the classroom, I’m a huge nerd. I like anything Star Wars related.

Amber Tresca (01:58):
Awesome.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (01:58):
I’m a gamer. I like to read, which is kind of funny. When I talk to my students, I tell them upfront, “When I was your age, I did not like reading. I absolutely hated reading.” But now that I’m an adult, and I get to choose what I get to read, I enjoy it much more. So that kind of gets some of them to buy in. Like I said, when I’m also, when I’m not in the classroom, I am a member of the 501st Legion that is an adult costuming organization that focuses around Star Wars. We have screen accurate costumes. We show up for a variety of different events whether it be Take Steps, which is a Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation walk, or it’s visiting children in the hospital, going to children’s hospitals. It’s a really nice organization that benefits different people and allows me to imagine myself as a plastic spaceman while making someone smile.

(03:05):
I like astronomy. I’m an amateur backyard astronomer. I have a 12-inch Dobsonian style telescope. I like biking, kayaking, basically anything outside, I’ll be there. That’s me in a nutshell.

Amber Tresca (03:22):
Oh, I love that. I love some outdoor time myself. There are some challenges when it comes to being outdoors and having IBD. Well, let’s get into that. Let’s get into, you touched on a whole lot of things that I want to ask you about today, so that was a great overview. And so Jordan, first off, we did connect on Instagram, and you do share quite a bit about your journey with Crohn’s disease on Instagram among some of the other interesting facets of your life. So I wonder if you would tell me a little bit more about the Crohn’s and how symptoms started and what that was like when you were diagnosed.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (03:59):
I was in high school. It was my senior year of high school. Back in 2007, I had just got done with doing the high school, our high school fall musical, Professor Harold Hill and The Music Man. So that’s another thing, I like singing and being in choir and such. It’s kind of hard to do in smaller towns now that I’m not in college anymore. I had gone to school and I started having really harsh pains in my abdomen area, didn’t eat anything that morning. I was in my choir lessons class and I couldn’t stay in it anymore. I said, “I got to leave. I got to use the restroom.” I went and I threw up probably two or three times.

Amber Tresca (04:49):
Oh my gosh.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (04:50):
I tried to go back. I was like, “Nope, I think I need to go home for the day.” Luckily where I went to high school, my grandmother had lived, lives in that town, so I just went down there. I’m like, “I can’t drive home, grandma. I got to crash or do something.” Well, I couldn’t sleep because I was still throwing up. The pain was still there. My dad had got off work and he took me over to the ER and just still off and on throwing up during that time. The nurses had thought that I had busted my appendix and it’s like, “Yeah, we’ll get you in and get an IV going and such.” And that was my first bout.

(05:39):
I want to say that I was in the hospital for a week because they had found that my white count, yes, it was elevated, but after doing a CT scan, it wasn’t my appendix. I think just by luck the way smaller towns work and hospital systems work, if there’s not someone in the departments that lives in the area, they ship them in from bigger cities. So I had a doctor, a surgeon from Omaha that just on a hunch, said, “I want to give you a colonoscopy.” Cool. I want to do that my senior year of high school. Awesome. So just on a hunch, he said, “Let’s go through and let’s do this and see if we find anything there.” So he ended up finding a lot of scar tissue, polyps and just gobs of inflammation in my colon.

Amber Tresca (06:40):
Oh, wow.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (06:41):
So he goes, I am 87% sure you have this, and my mom and dad and I were like, “What? We were under the impression I was here for my appendix, but it’s not my appendix?” Well, and he’s like, “Yeah, this is what I think it is,” because they have to do a biopsy and blood work to kind of really nail it down for sure. And so after that experience, I was in and out of the emergency room probably every other weekend just because of trying to figure out if I could eat anything from about November, I would say until March. For sure, February. I was officially diagnosed in January, but from that time I weighed like 180 lbs and I got down to 137 I think was the worst. So here’s a 6-ft dude weighing 180 pounds and dropping that much weight in that amount of time. Holy moly.

(07:51):
Finally, after the diagnosis, then it’s, okay, so we know what it is, but it’s invisible, so it’s like you don’t know how to face it or how to fight it, I guess is how you would put it. So you’re like, there’s this invisible boogeyman as if it were inside my body. So that part was frustrating just dealing with that at first. Like your body is fighting against you. It was the tough part. That was how it first started. And just the in and outs, the emergency room. I got to know one of the nurses very well because it seemed like clockwork. It was always at two o’clock in the morning on Saturday night into Sunday morning is when I would need to go to the ER, so there was a nurse there that I got to be good friends with. She goes, “Oh, you’re back.”

(08:43):
“Yep, I’m back.” There’s little bits of humor that you have to take in stride with it, I would say. That’s how adventure began. The first medicines that I took, I was on Pentasa and a steroid and an antibiotic. The doctor that I had had, if I had stayed on that combo, specifically the steroid and the antibiotic for as long as I was on that, because I was on it, that combo for, I don’t know, a year and a half, maybe two, I felt like I wasn’t having a good go with the GI doc that I first got. And then I was very fortunate and have the GI doc that I have now, and have had a good relationship with ever since, told me that the combo that I was on if I would’ve been on that much longer, my nervous system would’ve been fried or could have potentially been fried. It’s like, “Oh, cool. That’s nice to know.”

(09:49):
But I just remember just all of the meds that I was taking at first. That was what I thought was at first was, “That’s a lot of medicine.” Well, it would get worse in my college years. Just kind of a roller coaster. That’s how it first started. College was a challenge at times. Working is a challenge at times with Crohn’s.

Amber Tresca (10:16):
I want to ask you though, so you’re a singer. I actually did not know that from my deep dive into your Instagram, I don’t know if you posted about it or I just missed it yet, you were throwing up. What did that feel like? That had to be so upsetting that that was the symptom that was happening to you, and that can affect your voice, right?

Jordan William Henry Aggen (10:38):
It was frying my vocal cords. Luckily, like I said at the… I just finished The Music Man. I just finished in November, so it was, I don’t know if you want to say luck, fate, however you view that. So that was thankful. And then Iowa has the, it’s called Iowa Allstate. So there’s All State speech and All State events for sports and stuff. I made the All State Honor choir. And so all that stuff had happened in the fall thankfully. So I don’t know. If you just want to say it was fate luck, whatever you want to call it, it was thankful that that had happened, but it did do a number on my vocal cords. That’s when you get the old tried and true tricks of hot tea, lemon and honey. But it didn’t do any long-term damage because I did college choir, but you got to nurse your body back to health, finding out those tricks.

Amber Tresca (11:36):
Well, thank goodness for that because that was the first thing that I thought when you said that you were vomiting, and not everybody has that same experience. I think it tends to be a little bit less common with Crohn’s, but the fact that you also rely on your voice, oh my gosh, it just adds a whole other level of upset and anxiety to living with the Crohn’s disease. So you mentioned that you are a teacher, and I’ve had a few different teachers on the show. And of course I have kids, so I know plenty of teachers and how their days are usually structured, and so to me that seems like it’s a really challenging thing for a person with IBD to do even for healthy people. It’s challenging and difficult on your body just getting a bathroom break to go pee. How do you manage the day-to-day of Crohn’s while you’re at work?

Jordan William Henry Aggen (12:38):
Most days are fine. I notice that my bathroom visits uptick as my infusion date gets closer and closer. So a lot of it is just being upfront and honest with my staff members and say, “All right, I’m sorry. Today’s a bad day. Can you watch my kids for five minutes while I go to the restroom real quick?” I’m fortunate now where I work, there are two individuals that do what I do, and so they are more than happy to just let me do what I need to do if and when that happens. A big part is just communication. “I know you don’t have to do this, but when I interviewed for the position, I said I have this and it does sometimes take away from work. I have to get an infusion every six weeks. There are day or days where I am down for the count. I have to stop and reboot for a day and then come back hopefully ready to go.”

(13:56):
It’s having my own wipes because school toilet paper is the cheapest junk that you’d probably get more use out of it as 320 grit sandpaper than you would as actual toilet paper. But as you’re holding it dissolves in your hand, so there’s that aspect too. But that goes back to I have my own wipes. I don’t use the schools. I know where the bathrooms are. Luckily right now, I am a stone’s throw from my classroom is where my bathroom is. Now in my new school, that’s not the case, but I am closer to the office, and the offices do have bathrooms that are just a hall and a nook away from me. So it’s pre-planning. That is a part of daily life. Or like, you’ve dealt with it for so long, you just do certain things that become a part of your everyday structure. Making sure, if you’re having issues with diarrhea, you have your diarrhea meds in your backpack or bag or purse or whatever you have. The communication part again, being open with your boss, bosses, whatever you have, that’s another huge part of a person with IBD.

(15:29):
Personal responsibility of being up and making sure you are taking your meds. As a high school person, young person, young dumb person, I wouldn’t say I did that all the time, but you would feel the repercussion so you would learn pretty quickly, “No, I can’t do that. So there’s the learning on the fly/learning from your dumb mistakes” is another aspect of living with a chronic ailment that a person has to learn to deal with and that a person without one does not deal with.

Amber Tresca (16:07):
Right. Thank you for that. That makes a lot of sense. And I’m laughing really hard at the subpar quality of the toilet paper and then also being a teenage dumb-dumb and not taking your medication because that is something I know a lot about as well. Probably a lot of us do.

(16:28):
So one thing that you didn’t mention, I don’t think you mentioned in your intro where you told us a little bit about yourself was something that you do on your Instagram, which I have found enjoyable to watch, which is what you call Darkside Dining. So I think first, I have to make this a multi-point question here. First, you need to describe what the dark side is. There are people out there that don’t know, so you have to tell us what that is. But this is where you’re sharing recipes and the tools that you use. And given that you live with an IBD, I think it adds an extra layer of interest, at least for me on what you’re eating. So I wonder how did you come up with this and what does this mean cooking in your life? What kind of a role does it play in your life?

Jordan William Henry Aggen (17:14):
As a kid, I always liked cooking. Both my mom and dad are… My mom was a phenomenal cook and my dad is a phenomenal cook as well. It’s just kind of always been a thing in our family to enjoy cooking. And as my waistline would show, it also shows that too. But food plays a central part in a person’s life, especially if they have IBD because it’s always trial and error. And sometimes I always hated the “Keep track of it in a food journal.” Well, this day it affected me and this day it doesn’t. So your food journal idea just lit itself on fire, so don’t tell me to do that ever again.

(18:01):
But food just plays a central role in everyone’s life because hey, we all got to eat. I like cooking, I like trying different foods. Foods can take you places that you may not be able to get to ever. Plus, it’s just a unifying thing. We all like food. We may not all like the same foods, but it’s a unifying thing in that giving someone that something that you have prepared, I don’t know, it shows another level of care that I think a person has for those around them.

(18:42):
The Darkside Dining started really just as a gag, and then I just kept rolling with it. So here’s what the dark side is. If a person is not familiar with Star Wars and you’re needing an intro into Star Wars or into sci-fi in general, there’s a wonderful college humor video that is, it’s like Star Wars versus Star Trek or something to that effect, and it explains both of those because some people are either Star Wars or some people are Star Trek. I am both. I’ve even shown up at some of my organization celebrations in my Star Trek: The Next Generation cosplaying uniform, and I had other people do that along with me and that was quite hilarious.

(19:36):
What the Dark Side is, within Star Wars, there is like the college humor video will inform you, there’s the light side, the good side if you will, and the Dark Side, the bad side. And the college humor video will inform you or tell you it’s like philosophy for children, Light Side versus Dark Side, and there’s never anyone in between, which is a lie, but that is Light Side versus Dark Side.

(20:16):
How it became a thing just kind of started as a gag with another fellow cosplayer that I met at a con in Cedar Rapids. We were just joking about things that we would do if we could start life over again as if it were, so I said I would create a restaurant and call it Dark Side Dining or the Dark Side Diner or something like that is how it came to be, and so every often I will do is whatever I’m wanting to taste that day, if I’m wanting a different out of the norm cuisine, I will find a recipe and show what all goes into making whatever dish it is. If I use any special tools, I try to either take a picture, a video of me using said item.

(21:08):
And then showing the steps. As you’re going through making it, I will do that progression and then I have it as a finished product at the end with garnishing and all that good fun stuff. That is how the dark side dining came to be. As I was going through school, I toyed with the idea of maybe going to culinary school, but I realized I like cooking for small groups of people. I feel like if I’d have to do that day in and day out, I would start to probably hate cooking because I’ve heard some chefs, they don’t cook for themselves, they refuse. Or it’s on the opposite end of the spectrum, they’ll only eat their own food. So I don’t know, I didn’t want to go down that road, so it’s more of just a little gag, a little fun thing to do on the side.

[MUSIC: About IBD Transition]

Amber Tresca (22:04):
Coming up next, what Jordan wants other men to know about living with an IBD.

Amber Tresca
Let’s talk a little bit about the 501st because I’m very aware of it, but I don’t think I’ve even ever been to an event with the 501st. So it is a philanthropic group. It is cosplay, but I do know that it’s serious. There are rules and things like that.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (22:43):
Yes.

Amber Tresca (22:44):
Can you tell me a little bit more about that and then also I just wonder how you got started with it.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (22:50):
I first came across the 501st when I went to every… Well, it’s kind of changed in the past five years. Every other year there is a, now it’s becoming an every year type of thing, there is a big get together kind of like San Diego Comic-Con that kind of birthed all of these other ones, all these other Comic-Con or anime cons, what have you.

(23:17):
Star Wars has their own celebration, and I went to it in Orlando. When you go to a con, there are side panel discussions or informative sessions, whether about the show or other organizations tied to, in this case, Star Wars. And one of the sessions that I went to was a 501st Legion session. Some of the actors in the original series were even there like Peter Mayhew, who people may know as the lovable chew Chewbacca. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago, but he was tied with the 501st Legion and would do events with them. And so meeting him just by chance and then hearing what these fellow Legionnaires do just had me hooked right away.

(24:22):
To join the 501st Legion, you have to make a, and what they call is a screen accurate costume. So there is a entire library on the 501st Legion’s website dedicated to costumes that are either in video games, movies, comics, you name it, and it’s probably been made or is a work in progress to be turned into a costume. That is how dedicated the fans of the Star Wars universe are. If there’s a new character, a new costume that gets brought up, I can guarantee you someone will have that made within a couple of months.

(25:21):
What you then do is you go to that library, and that gives you the very basics. And then there are additional websites and forums that a person can go to and kind of get a temporary membership while you’re working on your costume and you can get together with other members and they can help you make your costumes, and they give you little inside tips and tricks to get it to look the way it’s supposed to look.

(25:57):
You then get voted in by a group of costume library experts. They look at your costume because you have to take photos of you in it and out of it and your items that you used and it gets approved or not. And then they give you the yay or nay and then you’ve become a member. We don’t have dos. Our costume is, and what we put into making our costumes, is kind of our dos so to speak. My first costume was a Storm Trooper ever since I was little. And watching, at my point in time, the first Star Wars movie was what’s now is episode 4, A New Hope ever since I saw the Storm Troopers busting into the ship and steamrolling the rebels, the good guys, if you want to say that, I always wanted to be that. I always wanted to have the Storm Trooper suit and put it on and… I don’t know, it just takes you to a different part of your brain and different type of creative feeling as you’re going through making the costume. And that was what I wanted to be my first costume, and it was.

(27:18):
I have two costumes in one with that Storm Trooper one, and then I’ve done another one from a comic that’s not as well known, but now you see with the movie series and/or that line of costumes is now becoming more and more popular and went solo. There was the Mud Trooper and that got to be pretty popular too. So whatever your interest is, the group allows you to go towards that interest and use a different part of your brain from your everyday normal life. It’s a good escape, shall we say.

Amber Tresca (28:02):
I love that. We’ll have to return to it. I am old enough that I saw episode 4 in theater when I was a wee child. One of my first memories is of the Star Destroyer going overhead and thinking about how big that must be because there was nothing like that in the movies at that time.

(28:25):
But I want to jump back to Crohn’s disease briefly because one of the reasons that I reached out to you, first of all, just the whole Star Wars thing, like I had to talk to you about it, but also because there are not as many men sharing their journey with IBD openly, or at least not in the way that you do maybe so transparently, and June being Men’s Health Month, also being your birthday month, I want to ask you, what do you want other men to know about taking care of their health while they live with an IBD?

Jordan William Henry Aggen (29:01):
The biggest thing I would say is realize you’re not alone and you don’t have to deal with it alone. For a while, and I would especially say when I was younger, I am the type that bottles everything in until it explodes. You can’t do that with this disease. It is a disease, it’s a lifelong disease. Bottling all of the emotions that one goes through inside only makes it worse and can actually compound it exponentially.

(29:45):
A second piece of advice is I would find… Having that one friend, that one friend that’s always going to be with you to help deal or just to talk. And it doesn’t even have to be about the disease itself, just talk about the days happenings. Getting that and developing that with just at least one person is a invaluable resource to have.

(30:15):
I am fortunate that I have multiple friends to help me do so and one is a fellow Crohnie. I know that’s a term that is used if a person has Crohn’s disease and he’s also a Storm Trooper with me. We actually have a coin made up that shows where the Iowa Crohn’s Troopers. We do the take Steps Walk every year together, and we’re there to support one another.

(30:44):
Having that friend or friends is just invaluable. It wasn’t until later, like using social media, that has also helped. I know social media has had some negatives as of late, especially with teens and anxiety and depression and such, but it also has helped flatten the world, so to speak. Just because we’re hundreds of miles away, it doesn’t mean that we can’t talk like we’re doing right now. Had I not been on Instagram, I highly doubt I would’ve ever come across you.

(31:23):
So utilizing your resources to develop connections is another key important, especially I would feel especially as just being a male, because it seems like you’re always taught, “You’re the man, tough it out. Suck it up, Buttercup. Rub some dirt on it and get going. Well, that line of thinking hasn’t helped the previous generation that instituted that and previous generations before that. So I think it’s time to leave that way of thinking in the dust. Forming relationships, utilizing your resources to help form those relationships, those are my two big suggestions.

Amber Tresca (32:13):
I love that. I agree wholeheartedly, and being a part of a community which you are a part of, several different ones goes a long way towards helping yourself deal with the disease and then also just to live a better quality of life as well. And having that one person that understands you on just an entirely different level because they also live with an IBD that’s just an incredible feeling, I think. So I’m so glad that you have that in your life. I mean, I hate that you all both live with Crohn’s disease, but I love that you found one another and that you’re able to help each other through the ups and downs of it.

(32:50):
So, all right, Jordan, well, I have two last questions for you, but my second to last question for you, and I’ve asked this question on this show before and I’ve asked it in a lot of other places, and I always find the answer to be very interesting. If you are showing someone Star Wars for the first time and you’re going to show them the main movies, not the TV shows, et cetera, et cetera, what order do you show them the movies in.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (33:20):
Being raised on the original three movies, I show 4, 5, and 6 now. I said the original ones because I have two older sisters and we’ve watched, we had the VHS, Star Wars and New Hope, and it was just called Star Wars. I don’t even think New Hope was on that VHS box. It was just called Star Wars. And then Empire Strikes Back, that is my fave, and then Return of the Jedi.

(33:56):
But I show those because those were done in a time when it was before the computer, before the computer and CGI, and you see just the huge amount of creativity and thought that went into making a sci-fi series like that. At some of the sessions, some of the background people that assisted in some form or fashion, the original movie, if you are able to still watch it somehow, if you have a working VHS player, there’s a little orange smudge underneath the land speeder, and they jokingly called it The Force at the time. You find out that was Vaseline, a Vaseline smudge covering up the wheels. They didn’t have a program to help edit that stuff out, but it just shows the ingenuity, I feel, that is what makes Star Wars Star Wars. So many times, especially now, so much of a movie, A CGI, but knowing that the Death Star trench run was made with battleship pieces and shooting it in the back of a Jeep doing drive-bys.

(35:37):
Just little things like that that in my view, make the movie a movie. That type of filmmaking is a rare thing anymore. In my opinion, you would show 4, 5, and 6. Go back and watch 1, 2, 3. And in my extra humble, humble opinion, I would say don’t even watch 7, 8, and 9.

Amber Tresca (36:03):
Oh!

Jordan William Henry Aggen (36:03):
That’s just my humble opinion.

Amber Tresca (36:08):
Oh no, we’re going to fight. Okay, no, we’re not going to fight. But I agree with you. 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9. That is the correct answer to that question, and don’t at me. But thank you so much. I did not know that about the Vaseline smudge. I know about some of the other things, but that one I did not know, so you taught me something, so thank you for that.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (36:33):
Oh, yeah.

[Music: IBD Dance Party]

Amber Tresca (36:33):
All right, so as promised, very last question, I want people to be able to find you across the interwebs, so would you please share your social media information?

Jordan William Henry Aggen (36:44):
My two accounts that I have, I have a Facebook account, and that’s just searching my full name. Not many people do that, so I guess I try to hide in plain sight type of thing. It’s just looking for Jordan William Henry Aggen, and then you’ll find me there. Although I found that I’ve typically just been using Instagram a lot more so, just because it’s a post to pick, you can say something if you want to or you don’t even have to say anything. It’s just a bum done. But my Instagram is @crohnstrooper.

Amber Tresca (37:24):
Jordan, it has been a pleasure to get to know you better. I really do appreciate your Instagram feed for a number of reasons that we have gone over, and I look forward to consuming more of your content as time goes on. So thank you so much for coming on About IBD.

Jordan William Henry Aggen (37:40):
Thank you for having me. It’s been great.

Amber Tresca (37:47):
Hey, super listener. Thanks to Jordan for taking the time to talk to me after summer school. I especially loved hearing about the bond he has formed with a friend who also lives with IBD. Having that kind of friendship is a true gift. We only scratch the surface of what he covers in his Instagram profile as Crohn’s Trooper, so I encourage you to connect with him there. Come for the IBD, but stay for the costuming and recipes.

(38:12):
As always, links to a written transcript, everyone’s social media handles and more information on the topics we discussed is in the show notes and on my episode 154 page on aboutibd.com. Thanks for listening. And remember, until next time, I want you to know more about IBD.

(38:33):