Famous people with Crohn's?... Really?

Today I woke up thinking about Crohn's Disease... That does not happen often since I have been in remission for so long. I have been blessed with the opportunity to forget about the disease... I have been in a diet for so long that I have become part of my daily living, and because I have been pain free for some time now, I some times have the luxury to forget.

However, this working I remember what it was to have Crohn's. Not because I had pain, but because I remembered those who have struggled like me. And at 6:30 am in the morning I wanted to checked, again, for those who had Crohn's and are famous. Of course, I am not famous... I am just a regular girl, but for some reason, we believe that this type of disease only happens to the common people... To those who are not under the world's scope... Well, this is what I found... at this websites:
1) http://crohn-colitis.hu/eng/famous-people-with-ibd.php 
2) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/01/celebs-crohns_n_913641.html#s318526&title=Cynthia_McFadden
3) http://crohnsvoice.blogspot.com/2009/06/famous-people-with-crohns-disease-or.html

So, I chose the ones that had an impact on me... Let's start..

1) Dwight D. Eisenhower

(1890-1969) the 34th President of the United States. On June 8, 1956 Eisenhower developed vague, ill-defined discomfort in the lower abdomen at 12:30 am. His physician arrived at the White House 30 minutes later and found moderate distention and tympany, but no particular point of abdominal tenderness. The President slept fitfully for the next few hours. Tap water enemas in the morning gave no relief. The pain became colicky and centered on the umbilicus and right lower quadrant. Without surgery, Eisenhower's bowel obstruction could easily have killed him. Even so, the decision to operate was contentious. Eisenhower had had a serious heart attack just nine months earlier, and this made surgery risky. As you might expect, it is difficult to decide to operate on the President of the United States when he might not survive the operation. At operation, the terminal 30 to 40 cm of the ileum had the typical appearance of chronic "dry" Crohn's Disease. An ileotransverse colostomy was performed, bypassing the obstruction. The post-operative course was smooth as well. He began conducting official business on the fifth post-operative day.

2) Anastasia

The thing I loved more about her is that she is not ashamed to show her scar!

She is a songwriter, a singer and a dancer. Born in Chicago, raised in New York City, Anastacia came from an entertainment oriented family: her father was a singer, her mother an actress in musical theater on Broadway. She was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at age 13. "I have a big scar on my stomach and would never hide it" - Anastacia said. "For those with Crohn's, holding in our emotions fuels the symptoms. What is seen as a curse for some, is a gift for me, because it has helped me to discover who I really am as a person. The disease has given me a clear window to my own emotions, which causes me to live each moment and to understand exactly how I'm behaving in a particular situation. Crohn's can be debilitating, but I am lucky to be in the two to three per cent of sufferers who are relatively healthy. I think I got it so young that I incorporated it into my way of living, enabling me to become stronger."

3) Shannen Doherty

In 1999 she has revealed to Starmagazine, that she's been secretly battling an agonizing stomach ailment for years. "I have Crohn's disease," she confides. And she says the condition, marked by a chronic inflammation of the intestine, can be quite embarrassing. People with the disease may experience abdominal pain, diarrhea and low-grade fever. "It can kind of mess with you," explains Doherty, who divorced first husband Ashley Hamilton in 1994 and dates director Rob Weiss. "There's nothing sexy about women saying: "I've got to go to the bathroom right now." The disease occurs in about 150 out of 100,000 people in the United States. Symptoms may be mild to severe and interrupt normal digestion and absorption of foods. Most sufferers take medication or have surgery. No cure. Unfortunately, Crohn's isn't the former Beverly Hills 90210 wild child's only health woe. An avid rider, Doherty says she's been thrown so many times by her horses that she now suffers from a painful back condition. "I'm supposed to wear a brace 24 hours a day," she laments.

 

4) David Garrard

The Jacksonville Jaguars quaterback was born in 1978. Garrard, a third-year veteran who played college ball at East Carolina, started feeling sick in January 2004. After a battery of tests, he was diagnosed with Crohn's on March 23. He has since lost about 10 pounds. Last week, medicine he had been taking to combat the illness lost effectiveness and he had be hospitalized. He opted against surgery to alleviate the blockage and instead went on a relatively new medicine, Remicade, that removes a type of protein from the bloodstream that can cause the inflammation. Doctors have assured Garrard that playing football won't put him at any risk because of the disease. "It's going to do whatever it's going to do on its own," Garrard said. "Football isn't going to bring it back or keep it away." Garrard conceded he was scared before he knew what was wrong. Now, however, he's looking at the bright side: He's eating better, has lost weight and is happy because the illness isn't as serious as it could have been. "It's bigger than football," he said. "It's just how I'm going to be from now on."

5) J.F. Kennedy

President John F. Kennedy was in far greater pain and taking many more medications during his presidency than previously known. Kennedy was sick from age 13 on. In 1930, when he was 13, he developed abdominal pain. By 1934 he was sent to the Mayo Clinic where they diagnosed colitis or it was called colitis. By 1940 his back started hurting him, by 1944 he had his first back operation, by 1947 he was officially diagnosed as having Addison's Disease. And he was basically sick from then on through the rest of his life. He had two back operations, in '54 and '55, which failed. And he needed chronic pain medication from '55 through his White House years, until he died in Dallas. He was never healthy. I mean, the image you get of vigor and progressive health wasn't true. He was playing through pain most of the presidency. By the time he was president, he was on ten, 12 medications a day. And on top of that he was getting injected sometimes six times a day, six places on his back, by the White House physician, with Novocain, Procaine, just to enable him to face the day. He had compression fractures in his low back, he had osteoporosis. He had a lot of surgery. In 1954, they put a plate in because the pain was so bad he needed, or they felt he needed to have his spine stabilized. It got infected in '55, they took the plate out. By the late '50s there were periods had he couldn't put his own shoes on because he couldn't bend forward.