wellness gestive tract. It varies in severity but generally causes abdominal pain and cramping, diarrhea and other related symptoms—and can even lead to malnutrition. Matson, who lives in White Salmon, was diagnosed at age 19 during her sophomore year in college. The cause of Crohn’s—named after the gastroenterologist who first described the disease in 1932—isn’t known but the disease seems to have a genetic component and Matson’s father, a trial lawyer living in Atlanta, also has Crohn’s. After her diagnosis, Matson was put on a high dose of Prednisone combined with another potent drug that ended up causing a severe allergic reaction. Doctors tried various drug cocktails to curtail her symptoms—including several immunosuppressant drugs, as Crohn’s is an auto-immune disease whereby the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue. Despite the drugs, Matson usually felt sick. She frequently had severe cramps, abdominal pain, nausea, depression and was often malnourished. Doctors told her that she would have to live with the disease for the rest of her life. “I felt like I was dying,” she says. She recalls the years from 1998-2004 as her sickest years. None of the drugs seemed to work so she underwent chemotherapy treatment for
A Journey from Patient to Healer By changing her lifestyle, Jo Matson was able to leave her suffering from Crohn’s disease behind
ing and again in The Dalles when she moved to the Gorge in 2002. “ I realized how sick I really was when I would sit in the cancer ward with so many other suffering people,” Matson says. “My chemo treatments were a constant reminder that my body was weak, and I felt like I was losing my mind.” In January of 2004, Matson’s pain became so intense that her doctor at OHSU recom-
by ruth berkowitz // photos by tim doty
mended immediate surgery to remove part of
Jo Matson remembers the day she picked up
quit, that she was cutting her pharmaceutical
her $2,000 bottle of Zofran pills prescribed to
umbilical cord.
treat nausea related to Crohn’s disease and said,
It had been 13 years since Matson was di-
“Enough is enough!” It was August 15, 2004.
agnosed with Crohn’s, a serious disease that
That was the day she told her doctor that she
causes inflammation of the lining of the di-
48 the gorge magazine // winter 2014
five years, first in Kentucky where she was liv-
her small intestine. However, because she had taken such high levels of immunosuppressant drugs, she would need to wait a few months for her immune system to strengthen. She looked forward to surgery because she hoped it would begin the process of healing and end her pain.