Stanford Medicine Children’s Health provides the latest expert, research-driven care to children with bowel disease
Abigail (Abby) is a high-energy 8-year-old from Visalia, California, who loves to bake sweets, create art, dance around the living room, and do gymnastics in the yard. Yet, she wasn’t always this carefree. She lived with undiagnosed inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) for close to two years.
The first sign that something was wrong with Abby was her severe constipation when she was 4 years old. Her parents, Brittani and Aaron, sought help from a local children’s hospital, which performed a colonoscopy.
“It came back normal, but it wasn’t,” says Brittani.
Abby’s IBD continued to brew, with worsening inflammation in her gut. She developed a perianal fistula, a small tunnel that formed near her…