Doctors Dismissed Her Digestive Symptoms as Diet-Related. It Was Crohn’s Disease

Jamie Harris (right) with her mother (left). Photo Jamie Harris Jamie Harris was in her 20s when she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. She shares her journey from symptoms and diagnosis to finding effective treatment to help raise awareness. Harris wants others to know that persistent symptoms like frequent bathroom trips, fatigue, or abdominal pain aren’t always due to diet. In 2010, Jamie Harris was living her best life in her 20s. She was in graduate school pursuing her teaching certificate and dating the love of her life. “It was a fun time in my life…I went on a trip to London with my boyfriend, who now is my husband,” she told Healthline. “I went to the bathroom, and I didn’t know if it was from travel, but I had blood in my stool.” When she got home from the vacation, her symptoms continued, including an intense stomachache. After seeing her general practitioner, he told Harris to add more fiber and psyllium husk to her diet. However, the sharp pain in her stomach continued for a year. She also started losing weight. At this point, Harris was student-teaching and shared her concerns with one of her own teachers, who urged Harris to go to the emergency room. “They ran the blood tests and were like, ‘Wow, your white blood cell count is way elevated,’ and then they ran further tests, and then that’s when I got referred to a GI doctor,” Harris said. The GI doctor officially diagnosed her with Crohn’s disease, a chronic, relapsing inflammatory condition that can affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract. “Crohn’s disease can present as superficial or deep ulcers (canker sores), and if left untreated, it can progress to bowel damage, including a buildup of scar tissue—what we call strictures or fistulas—which are connections between one loop of bowel and another loop of bowel or a connection from the bowel to the skin,” Emanuelle Bellaguarda, MD, Gastroenterologist and Associate Professor at Northwestern University, told Healthline. Harris’s first