Camp’s story takes her to Washington
By Tamra Jarrett
Concord resident Beth Camp recently realized a dream to go to Washington, D.C., but how she got there encompasses the journey of her life.
Camp was one of seven finalists in the Celebrating UC Success contest, sponsored by the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America and Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals. It was an essay contest program to honor, educate and inspire those affected by ulcerative colitis.
Hers was among 500 stories submitted. It was judged to be one of the most inspirational.
Camp was 11 when she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a disease which causes ulcers and irritation in the lining of the colon.
“I had lost a lot of weight. I had gotten puny,” she said. A battery of tests given at Egleston Hospital showed she had UC.
Her disease was so advanced that within a month of her diagnosis, she was hospitalized and receiving a unit of blood per day. Over a period of three months she received 62 blood transfusions.
“I was bleeding to death,” she said.
She was unable to eat and so weak she could not walk unassisted. She weighed just over 60 pounds when she was 12.
“My doctors felt surgery was the only option,” she wrote in her essay.
It took several surgeries to completely remove her large intestine and create a J-pouch. She said it took a year and a half of surgeries to “rework my plumbing and to put me back together again.”
She was the 13th person to have such surgery performed at Emory Hospital.
“We didn’t know what the future held,” she said. Doctors told her she would probably not be able to take part in sports activities. They said she would not be able to have a child.
Their prognostications were not to
(For the rest of the story, read of this week's The Journal-Reporter.)
Monday, July 21, 2008
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