Chronic illness doesn’t stop Mt. Lebanon woman from helping others
Molly Shannon had to grow up at a young age.
The Mt. Lebanon resident was diagnosed with a chronic disease at age 7 after she got sick on a family vacation. A few months later, doctors diagnosed her with Crohn’s disease, a type of irritable bowel disease (IBD).
In the last 15 years since her diagnosis, Shannon, 22, has graduated high school and college – having two surgeries in the process – and is now a nurse in the postoperative gastrointestinal oncology unit at UPMC Montefiore, where she often works with IBD patients.
“I’ve never looked at Crohn’s as a ‘disability,’ because I’ve never let it stop me from doing what I want in life,” Shannon said. “In a way, Crohn’s was a blessing in disguise for me. It made me who I am today, made me mature more quickly and made me a realistic person and, above all, made me want to help other people in my situation.”
Photo courtesy of Molly Shannon
Photo courtesy of Molly Shannon
Molly Shannon works with patients with irritable bowel disease at UPMC Montefiore.
When Shannon was diagnosed in second grade, she didn’t exactly know what was wrong with her or what Crohn’s disease was. Crohn’s is a chronic condition that causes the intestines to swell, which leads to severe stomach pain, diarrhea, vomiting and weight loss. There is about a one in 200 chance someone will develop IBD.
Shannon described the stomach aches as “excruciating” and “like someone is sawing you in half at times.”
Marc Schwartz, a gastroenterologist at UPMC, said Crohn’s is difficult to diagnose in young patients.
“It can be harder to diagnose because the symptoms are more vague,” Schwartz said. “It gets even more complicated when you’re diagnosing it in a child when they can’t describe the symptoms as well.”
Schwartz said genetics, environment and immune system all play a role in someone having IBD, though research into how and why an individual person gets IBD is still ongoing.
“It’s typically something that’s a lifelong disease,” he said. “There are symptoms that wax and wane over time, but with appropriate medication, it can be controlled.”
After Shannon was diagnosed, her mom and her doctor thought it would be best for Shannon to be open with her friends and classmates about her disease, since people with Crohn’s often have to go to the bathroom frequently and miss school.
“It was very embarrassing to share what I had just been through and what I might go through,” Shannon said. “I think a lot of kids at that age don’t get it and joke about it, so that was hard. I did get some teasing from some kids growing up. It was frustrating, because they didn’t understand the pain I was going through.”
Shannon first had gastrointestinal surgery when she was 10 years old and most recently in 2016. When she was a freshman in college, she started getting new treatment, a shot every eight weeks, which she said has worked much better than her old treatment.
After her second surgery, Shannon, a junior nursing major at Duquesne at the time, remembers waking up in a haze. The two nurses were questioning whether or not Shannon would be able to work as a nurse with a disease like Crohn’s.
“That statement filled me with rage, and I wasn’t even conscious enough to stick up for myself,” Shannon said. “That instance gave me even more determination to prove that I would continue to not let Crohn’s rule my life.”
Shannon knew her experiences with Crohn’s disease would lead her to be a good nurse.
“The more I grew up, the more I was fascinated with the medical world and the human body. I already learned about so much that people my age didn’t know,” she said. “I can tell these patients that I know exactly what they’re going through.”