Tag Archives: community

Help for Parents With Crohn's Disease or Ulcerative Colitis

About IBD Podcast 39 – Help for Parents With Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis

How does IBD affect your family? Do you know about the tools and resources that are available to help you on your disease journey? On this episode of About IBD, I talk with the Director of Patient Education and Support at the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, Catherine Soto, who outlines the many tools the Foundation provides for anyone with IBD, including those made just for parents, kids, and teens. I also spoke with Dr Rajeev Jain, who tells me about a new, one-of-a-kind resource for women with IBD who want to be mothers, called the IBD Parenthood Project. And finally I called upon Brooke Abbott, co-founder of IBD Moms, to talk about her role as a patient in developing the IBD Parenthood Project, and she entertains me with a small rant about social media.

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Your Body Is Depending on You to Be Assertive

About IBD Podcast 38 – Your Body Is Depending on You to Be Assertive

It’s common for people with IBD to look online for patients who have a similar disease journey to their own. For men, however, there are fewer places to find such a peer because there are not as many men in the IBD influencer space as there are women. That’s where Rasheed Clarke, author of Three Tablets Twice Daily, blogger, and ulcerative colitis and j-pouch patient steps in. Hear Rasheed contrast how his running career is different before and after j-pouch surgery, his thoughts on being one of the few male voices in the online IBD community, how we can encourage more men to share their journey, and the wild and wonderful thing he did with a toilet for World IBD Day in 2017.
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Creating Your IBD Elevator Speech

How to Create Your IBD Elevator Speech

An elevator speech or elevator pitch is a quick summary of a topic that can be given in about under a minute: just enough time to take an elevator ride. It’s usually thought of in a business sense, like a sales pitch or an idea you have that you present to someone in management upon a chance meeting (such as in the elevator). The use has been expanded to mean any prepared and rehearsed speech that you can give quickly on a moment’s notice. The purpose of this article is to guide you on crafting your elevator speech about your inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

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Episode 37 - I Felt a Lot of Guilt

About IBD Podcast 37 – I Felt a Lot of Guilt

What compels a person to share their personal journey with IBD? For Rasheed Clarke, author of Three Tablets Twice Daily, his writing began as a way to keep track of everything for himself and his healthcare team. It quickly turned into a tool that he used to show those around him the stark realities of a life with IBD: bloody diarrhea and all. His coworkers and friends were shocked to learn how much he was coping with every day but not everyone close to him approved of his honesty. On this episode of About IBD, Rasheed digs into the positives, the negatives, and the responsibilities that come with being an influencer in the IBD space.
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Consider These Points Before Sharing Your Story

Before You Share Your Story

As people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), it is important that we share our stories. We need to share in order to bring awareness of our disease amongst the public but also to other people who live with the disease. IBD is isolating but there is a thriving community that’s willing to share information and support in order to prevent anyone from feeling alone in their disease.

However. I have concerns.
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About IBD Episode 35 - It's a Pain I Invite Into My Life

About IBD Podcast 35 – It’s a Pain I Invite Into My Life

A diagnosis of IBD can take away the thing that you feel defines you as a person. This is how it felt for Megan Starshak of The Great Bowel Movement, who describes how her ulcerative colitis diagnosis at age 18 stole her passion for running. The process of losing and then regaining her identity as a runner fueled her desire to help people live well with a diagnosis of IBD. Her foundation seeks to educate those outside the IBD community through the use of a simple conversation prompt: Ask Me About My IBD.
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It's Important to Share Your Stories

About IBD Podcast 33 – It’s Important to Share Your Stories

Why is it important to tell our stories? Every person who has IBD is unique and so is their disease journey. You might not think your experience is relevant to others living with IBD or another chronic condition, but it is, in many ways. A story can provide validation and hope while helping put the reality of life with IBD in perspective. Brooke Abbott of The Crazy Creole Mommy Chronicles and IBD Moms and I continue our discussion of how we can support others with IBD through telling our stories and listening to yours.

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Community Doesn’t Just Create Itself

About IBD Podcast 32 – Community Doesn’t Just Create Itself

What are your traditions around Thanksgiving? What we eat and how we celebrate Thanksgiving depends on where we live, our ethnicity, and our family traditions. What matters is coming together and remembering to be thankful. Brooke Abbott of The Crazy Creole Mommy Chronicles and IBD Moms tells me about some of her family’s Thanksgiving traditions and how she talks about being grateful with her son. We discuss some of the ways we try to support the IBD community and what we can do better, especially during the hectic and stressful holiday season. Plus, see the end of the show notes for some of Brooke’s recipes!

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How to Learn More About Your Family IBD History

How to Learn More About Your Family IBD History

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) tends to run in families but it’s not as simple as being passed down from parent to child. It’s more complicated because of the number of genes that are involved and the fact that it’s the genes plus some “trigger” that starts the disease process. In fact, many people with IBD don’t have a family history of the disease. Even so, it’s worth digging into family history in order to learn if there’s more IBD or immune-mediated conditions in the family.
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About IBD Podcast 29 – I’m Sick and Nobody Will Help Me

What have you done when you couldn’t get anyone to take the symptoms of IBD seriously and you found yourself out of options? For Meredith, the road to a Crohn’s disease diagnosis was long and so frustrating that she wound up pleading for help from a specialist she’d never met. Going online to connect with other patients also took Meredith to places both light and dark, and she, Jaime, and I sort through our various experiences with social media as well as how we can work towards creating more hopeful content for new IBD patients in the future.

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