Kids Coping Strategies Video Transcript

Participants

David Cohen , Tess Koman , Elizabeth &Lizzie& Luckman , Brooke Shealy

Summary

Listen to a panel discussion of children and teenagers with Crohns and ulcerative colitis, types of inflammatory bowel disease. The children discuss how their IBD has affected their lives and the coping strategies they used to manage their disease.

Webcast Transcript

BROOKE SHEALY: Hello, I'm Brooke Shealy. Welcome to this webcast on Children and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. This program is being sponsored by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America.

We're dividing this webcast into three parts, and we'll begin with a discussion with three kids who have IBD. David Cohen is fifteen and lives on Long Island, not far from New York City. Tess Koman is twelve and lives in New Jersey. Lizzie Luckman is eleven and like David, also lives on Long Island.

First off, we'd like to ask the three kids to tell us about how and when they were diagnosed with IBD. David, let's start off with you.

DAVID COHEN: Hi. I'm David, and I was diagnosed with Crohn's when I was ten years old. And well, my diagnosis was Crohn's, and basically when I got it I suffered severe weight loss, like I lost twenty pounds in about a month and I had a lot of stomach problems and I was going to the bathroom often, and basically just severe stomach pain.

BROOKE SHEALY: Lizzie, when were you diagnosed and what was your diagnosis?

LIZZIE LUCKMAN: I was diagnosed when I was nine and my diagnosis was ulcerative colitis.

BROOKE SHEALY: What kind of symptoms did you have?

LIZZIE LUCKMAN: Well, the summer before it I was at sleep-away camp. And I was getting like diarrhea and my stomach was hurting really badly. And after camp like around the beginning of May or end of April, I like started bleeding. And then like the day after, that morning, and then my mom had to take me to the hospital to the emergency room and we had to wait for like four hours.

BROOKE SHEALY: Tess?

TESS KOMAN: Well, when I was seven I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, and I'd been having very like severe pains all of a sudden and I was going to the bathroom a lot. I was constipated and it continued until I was diagnosed.

BROOKE SHEALY: So what were you thinking about? Were you scared? Were you nervous? Did you really know what was going on?

TESS KOMAN: I had never heard of Crohn's disease, so I really had no clue what Dr. Rosh was talking about. So I don't know, I kind of got scared. I mean I knew something was happening. Something was wrong. But I didn't really understand what because I'd never heard of it before.

BROOKE SHEALY: Lizzie, how did it make you feel? Did you really understand what the doctors were talking about?

LIZZIE LUCKMAN: I didn't really understand what they were talking about, but I did in somewhat sort of a way because my mom had it. So I've like known, like two years before she went to the hospital because she was sick and the next year she had to have her colon removed because she was having it so severely. So I kind of knew in somewhat what they were talking about.

BROOKE SHEALY: Were you scared that that might happen to you?

LIZZIE LUCKMAN: Yes, but then she said that I didn't have it as badly as her.

BROOKE SHEALY: Did that make you feel better?

LIZZIE LUCKMAN: Yes.

BROOKE SHEALY: Good.

BROOKE SHEALY: David, what was your course of treatment? What did the doctors do? Did they put you on certain types of medications? Did you have any complications?

DAVID COHEN: Well, at first they put me on this one medicine and it really didn't do much so then they kept on increasing that and then they put me on some different medicines, and they just kept on adding different medicines and the different amounts of medicine to see what would treat the disease well enough to make me feel better.