When Lindsay S. learned she had inflammatory bowel disease at 24 years old, her first concern was how it might affect her plans to have a family and the potential impact on a child.
"Even when I was first being put on medication, I wanted to know what effect it would have on future children," she says. "I was coming up on childbearing years, so I wanted to know if I got pregnant what could those meds do to a baby. I was pretty picky about what meds I wanted to start with."
For answers to her questions, she didn't turn to her obstetrician or even her primary care doctor. Instead, she relied on her gastroenterologist – Sunanda Kane, MD, an IBD specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN – to help her navigate living with ulcerative colitis, a form of IBD.
Fast-forward 10 years, and Lindsay and her husband now have two healthy boys, ages 2 and 3, and she has been able to manage her IBD.
"Dr Kane was very helpful," says Lindsay, who lives in Greater Rochester and asked to be identified by her first name only to protect her privacy. "Most of the OBs that I ran across freaked out about my taking these meds for my IBD.
