There are many women who have been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis or crohn’s disease (or IBS) many years prior to discovering they also have endometriosis. In fact, the many women I have spoken to have had it unfold this way. For me, however, I had suffered with endometriosis for nearly 20 years before I knew I had IBD. To be honest, I didn’t even think I had IBD. I didn’t even know the specifics of my colon and never thought to think the diarrhea I experienced every month along with my period was anything other than ‘period poops’. So to be told, a week into what I thought was the flu, that I now have a chronic autoimmune disease?! Woah, slow down! But that is now my reality. The first struggle with having IBD is that I had spent 20 years defining the various types and degrees of pain I experienced over the years and now I was forced very quickly to add new descriptors of pain to my repertoire. The second, and maybe even bigger challenge, was to keep the inflammation down while still obtaining enough nutrients. I definitely did the BRAT diet for many many months, and then slowly but mathematically introduced one ingredient at a time over the course of 3 years. And the journey continues.