'I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease at just 13'
As part of our special coverage on Crohn's disease we've been speaking with Scots who are living with the condition - Calum is a 33-year-old Meteorologist from Airdrie
Last updated 28th Sep 2022
As part of our special coverage this week on Crohn's disease - a condition which effects more than 26,000 people in Scotland - we've been speaking with Scots who are living with the condition.
Calum McCall has been dealing with Crohn's for 20 years, he was diagnosed at the young age of just 13.
There's a common misconception that the vast majority of people with bowel disease are older, but around a quarter of those diagnosed with Crohn's are under 30.
"I had been symptomatic for up to 12 months, if not beyond that." Calum told us.
"For me, initially, it was just the diarrhoea, which was the main symptom, I was just getting constant diarrhoea. And with that, too, you know, abdominal pain and as a result always on the skinnier side of the spectrum."
33-year-old Calum, who now lives in Airdrie, was brought up in Fort William. He also studied in Edinburgh - although experienced multiple interruptions due to illness. He's now a freelance meteorologist.
He'd been experiencing symptoms for about a year but hadn't had any success getting answers from the Doctor. It was on a family holiday when things got progressively worse, prompting another GP visit upon his return home.
Calum describes the process, which would have been scary and daunting at such a young age, he said:
"Straightaway they could see that there was inflammation there, they took a few biopsies, and then I think within a few days or a week or so they also did the full colonoscopy as well.
"Even before the results were coming back, they did have strong inclination that this was some form of irritable bowel disease.
"It took for the biopsies to come back probably within a few weeks, and then that confirmed that this was Crohn's Crohn's disease. So it was a massive shock to me.
"I remember I was very kind of shaken by this news, upset about it, but at the same time I didn't really appreciate what it was going to evolve or manifest itself through my life because I hadn't actually heard of the disease."
Calum spoke about how his teenage years we're incredibly difficult whilst trying to juggle being a normal teenager but also managing his condition.
His changing body and routines also made it rather difficult to nail down an effective treatment which would consistently give him relief.
We've heard about how delays in being diagnosed can effect patients, some people have waited more than a decade to finally have it confirmed.
But Calum feels even the year he waited may have had a big impact on how the disease developed.
"I do wonder, perhaps that the fact that I had a period whereby I didn't have any medications, and basically the Crohn's was left to its own devices for say, a year, perhaps before a diagnosis, I just wonder whether that kind of added fuel to the fire and made it just a bit more complicated to kind of help dampen it down through through my teenage years."
20 years on Calum continues to battle his Crohn's. The very nature of the disease means it will continue to evolve and therefore your treatment must change as time goes on.
Patients may discover their own coping mechanisms, and become more comfortable with explaining their condition, but it would be wrong to say it ever gets easier.
But there have of course been medical advancements in the 20 years Calum has lived with Crohn's, and doctors have come to better understand his own individual case of the disease.
He said: "It's been incredible the advancements and particularly these biologic treatments which have been a game changer really for IBD (Irritable bowel disease) sufferers and getting getting them into into remission.
"It's given another option on the table for younger generations, the likes of myself if we had that on the table when I was 12-13 I think it would have been extremely valuable because it's a more targeted approach and and whilst there still is side effects, like with all drugs, they're probably much less.
"We're actually at the crossroads at the moment whereby it does look as though my Crohn's is starting not to keep my inflammation levels down as of over the last year or two.
"I'm now at the point of looking waiting for know my IBD nurse consultants to come back to me with the next biologic treatment for us to try, but they certainly have been game changing."
You can read up on all the symptoms of Crohn's disease here.