This is my story.
It isn’t finished.

I was born in 1997 into a loving family. My parents and my faith have helped carry me through years of uncertainty.

I was diagnosed with severe Crohn’s disease as a child. I had two surgeries at six and spent my seventh birthday in a children’s hospital. Adversity became a part of my life early on.

For a long time, I let the disease define who I was. At 29, I’m learning to live alongside it instead. I am more than what I’ve endured.

This spring, I was hospitalized with norovirus, C. diff colonization, and the worst Crohn’s flare of my life. My weight fell to 93 pounds. I’m 5 feet 11 inches tall.

My care team placed a PICC line so I could receive total parenteral nutrition, or TPN—nutrition delivered through a vein. A few weeks later, I developed two blood clots and needed a heparin drip. A central line was then placed in my upper-right chest.

After I was discharged in May, I was improving. I hoped life was finally settling down.

In July, I developed osteomyelitis, a bone infection, in my thoracic and cervical spine. On August 21, I needed another operation to remove the hardware.

Afterward, the wound did not close properly. My current care involves daily wound packing and dressings while it heals from the inside out. With my other health challenges, my care team has not been able to simply close it surgically.

This has been the biggest storm of my life. There have been many nights when I’ve asked God to pull me out of it.