A young teacher who was diagnosed with a crippling bowel disease which left her rushing to the toilet “20 times a day” has said the condition saved her life after routine blood tests revealed a “silent killer” kidney disease two years before she showed any symptoms.
After suffering from stomach cramps and seeing her weight plummet from 10st to 8st in just four months, in 2014, Charlotte Douglas, 25, was told she had Crohn’s disease, a lifelong condition where parts of the digestive system become inflamed, and thought she was facing the biggest health challenge of her life.
But in early 2018 after her doctors spotted an issue during regular blood tests for her condition, a biopsy revealed she had chronic kidney disease and her renal function quickly fell to just five per cent by late 2019 – when she received a life-saving transplant from her mother, Andrea, a 54-year-old post office worker who lost 5st to ensure she could be a donor for her daughter.
Now “fitter than ever”, Charlotte is urging others with the condition to “live their lives to the fullest” after winning three gold medals at the British Transplant Games and preparing to compete in the 5,000m and 1,500m races at the European Transplant And Dialysis Sports Games this week.
Charlotte, a secondary school science teacher from Stockton-on-Tees, Durham, who is in a relationship with Daniel Wilkinson, 25, an ethical hacker, said: “Crohn’s has saved my life.
“I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t caught it early… I would have gotten much more poorly because I only showed symptoms very late.”
She added: “I wouldn’t have known anything was wrong until the summer of 2019, and my kidney function at that stage was close to being kidney failure.
“But we were able to plan ahead, and my mum worked so hard and was so determined to lose the weight so she could be my donor and save my life.
“I’m so grateful for my health and how good I feel and I want to live my life to the fullest. I don’t hold back on anything.”
The transplant operation was a success, and Charlotte now credits Crohn’s with giving her and her parents a “much healthier life” as she began running with her mum Andrea and dad Roger Douglas, 53, a green keeper on a golf course.
Throwing herself into athletics, she won three gold medals at the British Transplant Games in Leeds in early August in the three-kilometre speed walk, three-kilometre road run and 1,500m race.
Charlotte is hoping to raise awareness for Crohn’s and show other transplant recipients they can lead a “happy and healthy” life when she competes in the 5,000m and 1,500m races at the European Transplant and Dialysis Sports Games in Oxford this week (August 21-28).
More than 400 transplant recipients and dialysis patients from over 25 countries across Europe will be competing in the sporting event, which includes disciplines ranging from football and volleyball to discus and petanque.
The event is organised by Transport Sport, a UK charity raising awareness of organ donation and the importance of staying active following a transplant.
“It’s going to be amazing, there will be thousands of people,” said Charlotte.
She added: “It’s going to be a tough competition, and I’m a bit nervous but I just want to do my best. I’m very competitive so hopefully I get some personal bests.
“Hopefully I will then get selected for the World Transplant Games, which would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Charlotte was a “happy and healthy” young girl in her teens, passionate about athletics and dancing.
But in 2014, then aged 16, Charlotte began to suffer from stomach cramps and said she was rushing to the toilet more and more.
Embarrassed to tell anyone about her condition, it was only when she lost 2st and was spending “more time on the loo than off it” that she decided to see her GP.
Initially believing it was an infection, she was eventually diagnosed with Crohn’s in November 2014 at the University Hospital of North Tees.
“One of the reasons I didn’t get checked sooner was because I was too embarrassed to tell anyone I was going to the loo so often,” said Charlotte.
“I didn’t want to talk about it to anyone, not even my parents.”
Charlotte was put on a “triple treatment” of immunosuppressants, which worked immediately and saw her lead a comfortable and “normal” life within just three months.
“Over the next two or three months I had drastic improvements – I went from really horrible and uncomfortable to feeling fine,” she said.
“We were very practical about the diagnosis, we didn’t want to dwell on the negative and just wanted to figure out how to best live my life.”
Charlotte met her boyfriend Daniel while at university, where she was open about her diagnosis and was no longer embarrassed about it.
She drove back to Stockton-on-Tees for blood tests every eight weeks to monitor her condition, but otherwise led a relatively healthy life.
But in her second year of uni, in 2017, following routine blood tests, medics became concerned with her creatinine level, used to gauge how well your kidneys are performing their job of filtering waste from your blood, initially believing she was dehydrated due to the hot weather.
Alarm bells only started ringing around Christmas, when Charlotte was referred to a kidney specialist at Middlesbrough’s James Cook University Hospital.
But while Charlotte drove to the hospital from Durham every two weeks, medics were unable to find the cause for her rapidly declining kidney function.
“All through it, I felt completely fine and normal. I knew it was happening but it was weird because I couldn’t feel anything different,” she said.
“People would ask me how I was feeling and I would just tell them I’m fine. I thought at some point I’ll need to feel something.”
Despite feeling fine, Charlotte said doctors were able to plan ahead for when they believed her condition would become critical and in August 2019 she had surgery to have a tube fitted through her stomach in case she needed to go on dialysis.
A few months later in October 2019 the tube saved her life when her kidney function dropped drastically to just five per cent and she was rushed into hospital for dialysis.
“I had no symptoms from it at all but my body was full of toxins, which is why they call it the silent killer. If my kidney function had continued to drop without treatment, it could have been fatal,” she said.
The following month, her mum Andrea, who was a donor match and spent the year working tirelessly to lose 5st so she could be eligible for the transplant, donated her kidney to Charlotte during a four-hour operation at Newcastle Freeman Hospital.
“We were told it was a possibility that she could be a live donor, and my mum needed to lose weight and she managed to do it within the year,” Charlotte explained.
“She lost around 5st – her BMI was above 30, and she got it to below 27 as it was the threshold.”
“I was so impressed by her mental attitude towards it. It’s insane that she could be so determined to help save my life.
“To know she was doing that for me was amazing.”
For information on Crohn’s see crohnsandcolitis.org.uk
