Conner has always been such a healthy little boy. He started out as a 7lbs 2 oz baby. He was perfect. When he was 9 years old Covid hit all over the world, including my home. My husband was hospitalized for 4 day with Covid but the hospital sent him home still sick which led our whole family to get it. My 2 older sons got better really quickly. My youngest had symptoms for less than 24 hours and he was better the next day. Conner wasn’t getting better so we brought him to the emergency room and he starting having extremely bad pain in his bottom. A huge abscess started growing and the nurses and I just watched it grow and they brought the doctor in and they made the decision to send Conner to a different hospital.

The day before he was supposed to have the abscess drained, it drained on its own but left a hole called a fistula on his bottom. We followed the doctors orders by putting him in sitz baths several times a day until it healed. He got better within a couple months and was back to his normal self. Climbing trees, riding bikes and going on roller coasters, eating tacos and sushi and whatever else he wanted to try. He hasn’t always been a skinny kid. He was once bullied as a 7 year old and some older kids were making fun of him and he didn’t like being called fat so he lost weight and was really healthy looking and came back to the kids and said, I’m not fat anymore. So he showed them that he wasn’t affected by their words and it only encouraged him to lose the weight. 

After Covid like I said, Conner was healthy again. About a week before we brought him in to the hospital, Conner complained about his stomach hurting but the pain would go away very quickly and wasn’t constant. But he started throwing up a few days later and I was noticing that he was not keeping anything down and his stomach pain wasn’t getting better. So we knew he needed to go to the hospital and took him to lawnwood. They took a Ct scan of his belly and was very concerned about his colon and they asked him if he was feeling any pain in his bottom. He told them he cramped up sometimes and felt pressure but didn’t have problems with pooping. But what we all saw next showed a whole different story. We discovered a large ulcer on his bottom on the inside of his cheek and 3 more fistulas right under his anus. My heart sank to my stomach but he swore to me that it didn’t bother him and he didn’t want me to worry so he didn’t tell me or my husband about it. We were then transferred over to palms west hospital to get a GI team in place for him. He had an MRI done, which then led to a colonoscopy and also an endoscopy. The dr diagnosed him with Crohn’s disease. They had started a steroid treatment and he started to feel better but they had to quickly take him off of it because he had something inside of his body that they were concerned about being TB. He had 4 different types of TB tests done to be certain and all 4 of them came back as negative for TB and they are still not quite sure what it was but all tests after that were pretty much clear of what it was and no more signs of what was going on. So he was cleared to start his 1st remicade treatment on October 24th. We are now in the care of Nemours children’s hospital in Orlando for GI and wound care and Nemours in Lake Mary for endocrinology to help bring Conner up to a healthy weight again because of the Crohn’s disease he looked very underweight and he’s not that tall for an almost 12 year old boy. We are looking forward to having Conner climb trees and riding bikes and I know with the help of our team of specialist, the love and the support of family and friends old and new, we will have our happy and healthy Conner again.