Colorectal

Patient Stories | Kaitlyn and Crohn's Disease / Gastroparesis

A Childhood Diagnosis

Kaitlyn was 5 years old when she first began battling symptoms like severe abdominal pain, persistent diarrhea, fatigue and weight loss. In 2005, she came to Cincinnati Children’s and was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that causes long-term inflammation throughout the digestive tract.

Kaitlyn’s care team managed her condition with medications and other therapies until 2019, when her symptoms worsened significantly.

“I started having severe upper abdominal pain and lost about 20 pounds unintentionally,” she recalled. “I was also having severe nausea and couldn’t eat. When I tried to eat, I’d experience this revulsion to putting food in my mouth.”

Scott Pentiuk, MD, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Cincinnati Children’s who helped lead Kaitlyn’s care team, ordered a nuclear medicine test called gastric emptying scintigraphy, which uses a small amount of a radioactive substance to track how food moves through the digestive system.

The test showed that Kaitlyn had gastroparesis, also known as delayed gastric emptying—a condition in which the stomach takes too long to empty its contents, leading to symptoms like nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Treatments like medications, Botox injections and balloon dilation procedures helped reduce Kaitlyn’s symptoms for a few months, but the nausea and vomiting returned. In 2020, she became so dehydrated and weak that she had to be hospitalized. Her team placed a short-term feeding tube to help her get the nutrients she needed.

“All of this was going on while I was in undergrad for pre-medicine and also working part-time at a local pediatrician’s office,” Kaitlyn said. “I was really trying not to miss a lot during that time, but sometimes it was impossible.”

New Challenges

After multiple hospitalizations and feeding tube replacements, Kaitlyn’s care team decided to try something different.

Dr. Pentiuk messaged Aaron Garrison, MD, a pediatric surgeon and surgical director of Cincinnati Children’s Burnet Campus, to see if Kaitlyn would be a good candidate for a gastric stimulator, a small device that’s surgically implanted in the abdomen and uses mild electrical impulses to reduce nausea.

“One of the best parts about working here is that you have experts in every specialty who all work together to help patients with complex conditions,” Dr. Garrison said. “I’ve known Dr. Pentiuk for a long time. When he reaches out about a patient he’s been caring for over many years, I trust his recommendation.”

Kaitlyn—another critical member of the multidisciplinary team whose opinion Dr. Pentiuk sought—trusted it, too.

“I’d never heard of a gastric stimulator before, but after doing research, it sounded like it improved quality of life and would take away the nausea and vomiting so I could eat,” she said. “I felt hopeful.”

After a two-week test phase showed that a permanent stimulator would help, Kaitlyn had the device placed in September 2021.

“My life has completely changed since then,” Kaitlyn said. “My quality of life has significantly improved. I’ve had no hospitalizations related to gastroparesis since then, no feeding tubes since then, and I don’t take any medications anymore for gastroparesis outside of occasional nausea medications, which could be related to Crohn’s.”

From Patient to Future Physician

Although Kaitlyn still suffers from Crohn’s flare-ups, her focus today is on her future. She’s working toward her medical degree at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine’s Northern Kentucky campus and dreaming of completing her residency and fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s. In fact, she’s already shadowed Dr. Pentiuk.

“Kaitlyn has lived with this and doesn’t want others to go through it,” Dr. Pentiuk said. “She wants to make a difference, and that attitude, combined with everything she’s overcome, will make her an incredibly empathetic doctor.”

Dr. Garrison agrees: “To see a 26-year-old medical student who’s faced more medical challenges than most people do in a lifetime remain so positive is incredible. She’s always smiling, always pleasant and always optimistic.”

That wasn’t always the case for Kaitlyn, but it’s been the most important part of her story—and the one she hopes will inspire others.

“I’ve been that 15-year-old wondering where my life was going to go with all my medical conditions, but I’ve also learned that it can get better,” she said. “I’ve worked with some of the best physicians I’ve ever met, and that’s coming from a medical student who has worked with a lot of physicians. They’ve helped me realize that it’s not the end of the road—that I can still follow my dreams and be whatever I want to be. I’d love to have the relationship with patients one day that my specialists at Cincinnati Children’s have had with me.”

(Published May 2026)