Since then, she has surgery four times \u2013 in 2001, 2006, 2013 and 2025 \u2013 to manage fibrosis in her bowel, related to the condition.<\/p>\n
She has also spent long periods of her life on either a liquid diet or a heavily restricted diet, including after surgery, to help manage symptoms.<\/p>\n
Before her most recent surgery she suffered terrible abdominal pain and spasms, leading to nausea, fever, dizziness and even loss of consciousness.<\/p>\n
She was invited to donate tissue from her surgery to the research led by a University of Edinburgh team and said she was pleased to take part in the hope of helping others with the condition.<\/p>\n
The 65-year-old, from Edinburgh, said: \u201cBefore my surgery, I was in and out of hospital and it was incredibly exhausting. It can feel like your life is on hold.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019ve learnt to plan my life around things and try not to let the condition stop me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of having medication to control or stop the fibrosis would be amazing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough I realise it probably won\u2019t benefit me personally, this research could potentially be a complete game-changer for others like me. I wanted to get involved in the research to help them.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she is really grateful to the \u201cmarvellous team\u201d at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh who have looked after her.<\/p>\n
The retired teacher has noticed huge advances in the diagnosis and treatment of Crohn\u2019s in the decades she has lived with it.<\/p>\n
However it is understood surgery currently remains the only option to help with the fibrosis as after each surgery to remove the damaged portion of the bowel, the disease re-starts and eventually the tissue becomes scarred again, leading to blockages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since then, she has surgery four times \u2013 in 2001, 2006, 2013 and 2025 \u2013 to manage fibrosis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[163,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-376996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}