I have been with my husband since I was 15. We have grown up with each other through school, university, first jobs and into adulthood; but the one thing that he didn’t sign up for was being lumbered with a perpetually sick person. Four years into our relationship, on Valentine’s Day, I was rushed into hospital and diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a form of inflammatory bowel disease.
My days can sometimes revolve around my condition – but so do his. From hospital appointments, to days when I’m too unwell to leave my bed and having to constantly deal with the changing lists of diagnoses and medication, it’s not an ideal way to spend your life, even if it is secondhand. It also means that Alfie has seen me in the most physically repulsive states I could possibly inhabit – including hours spent on the toilet, downing MRI liquid in hospital and ugly-crying at the unfairness of it all.
