My heart jumped, then thudded, as I faced my fears and the door to Room 207 at Los Altos High School. In three minutes, I would walk in, proceed to the head of the class, listen to teacher Cathy Dao recite my bio to roughly 30 10th graders — and then I would say “diarrhoea” out loud for the first time in my life to an in-person public audience.

It was 2024, and I was at the school to discuss a piece of mine that HuffPost published nearly three years earlier, “Here’s What I Want You to Know About Having Diarrhoea While Out in Public.” The essay addresses bathroom urgency, a condition millions of people experience, some for a limited time and others to varying degrees for the rest of their lives. Because I have Crohn’s disease, I’ve been dealing with it on and off for decades.

Bathroom urgency can affect people with other chronic medical conditions, too, including those with urinary incontinence or paruresis (shy-bladder syndrome); people with ostomy bags; and people on certain medications, say for cancer, weight loss or iron deficiency. But it also can strike delivery folks, mail carriers and other people who don’t work in a building with restrooms nearby, runners, young children and the elderly, and people without homes. Essentially, at some point, there’s a good chance that everyone will require a public restroom because of an urgent need to go, and my essay laid out the need for more easily accessible facilities.

The HuffPost Personal editor had liked my article straightaway — I was the one who put the brakes on publishing it. Several weeks before it was slated to go up on the site, I emailed him, “I’m scared to have this piece published — wondering if I’ll have the nerve to post on social media.” The thought of appearing before such a large and public audience as someone who experiences diarrhoea was terrifying, especially because so few people talk openly about it. However, that was all the more reason to move forward. I slept on it, and then nervously gave my editor the go-ahead.

Across social media platforms, the feedback was mostly positive. One person wrote about waiting for this article for their entire life. A few people were not supportive, writing comments such as, “This article is disgusting.” Hearing something like that can stick with a recovering people-pleaser.

Ultimately, I was happy I’d written the essay — and was happy I was going to be talking about it at the high school. Thanks to an invitation from the school librarian, Gordon Jack, to participate in the school’s annual Writers Week, I had first discussed my writing with students there six years prior.

Five days before my talk, I emailed Ms. Dao, whom I’d gotten to know over the years. “Curious how my article was rec’d by your students, and/or if you have any suggestions re: approach?”

Ms. Dao assured me that she’d told her first period class I had never spoken these words to a non-Crohn’s audience, and that she was confident they would be mature, but I was still anxious. Telling the truth meant risking ridicule, rejection and/or embarrassment — especially in front of high school students. That said, I also knew that if I didn’t start telling my truth, it might not make it out into the world.

Standing before the classroom door, I summoned my purpose: to raise awareness and to ease at least one other person’s way... even if I did not know how much it would ease mine.

"Sometimes it takes a teacher — and her class." (The author, left, with Cathy Dao).

Clutching my marked-up essay in one hand, and reaching for the doorknob with the other, I headed into that high school classroom… and my deepening vulnerability.

I’d had a carefree childhood in a close-knit seaside town, just riding the waves and my Schwinn — until I began to feel ill weeks before I entered 9th grade and 19 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act.

After 18 months of watching and listening to the swirling white coats from my exam table perch, I finally got a diagnosis: Crohn’s disease, one of the two main forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), along with ulcerative colitis (UC).

One afternoon in the waiting room of my new gastroenterologist, I grabbed a brochure for a camp for kids with Crohn’s. I thought if I went, maybe I could make even one friend who got this disease without me trying to get them to get it. I excitedly flapped the brochure in my mom’s direction on the drive home.

“Can I go to this camp for kids with Crohn’s?” I asked.

My mom had doggedly pursued a diagnosis for me. She sat up at night worrying about me, stuffed enemas up my back side, cleaned up my vomit and diarrhoea, and watched “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” with me rather than socialising........

© HuffPost