Vital voices: Taylor's story living with ulcerative colitis

I feel like I would still almost five years later would not be diagnosed if I did not find a gastro of color.

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I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in March of 2018. I went to a number of doctors.

Almost all of them wrote my symptoms off as I'm making it up in my head or I was pregnant

or I had some type of STI or STD. In between this time, I'm literally not able to keep any food down.

Like, I'm in crippling pain, and that was when I told my primary care physician, I was like I am done with this.

He begged me at this point. So he is begging me to try one more gastro, and I told him that my only requirement this time

was that my gastro not a white male. All of the other ones were white males,

and I just didn't feel heard. I didn't feel like they were understanding where I was coming from. And so he sent me to one more gastro was a minority,

and his physician assistant was a woman. And that was when I was finally diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.