For eight years Jessica Terry lived with abdominal pain so severe it made her life a constant struggle. The pain, along with diarrhea, vomiting and fever, made her so sick she lost weight and often had to miss school, and doctors were unable to determine the cause of Jessica’s distress. Until one day Jessica, 18, accomplished what her physicians could not – she figured it out herself. During her Advanced Placement high school science class, while studying samples of her own intestinal tissue under a microscope – samples which her own pathologist had indicated were normal – she detected an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, an indication that she had Crohn’s disease. Jessica, who graduated from Eastside Catholic School in Sammamish, Washington, is now being treated for Crohn’s.

By Staff