Raysa Abreu

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1999 Great Comebacks™ Recipient

Raysa Abreu has always been up for a challenge, be it juggling time between work and family, participating in a charity walkathon or living with the daily challenges of IBD. Her battle against Crohn’s disease included four life-saving surgeries over a six-week period, which resulted in a permanent ileostomy to bypass her small intestine. Yet it has not stopped her from doing everything she had done before.

Raysa’s Great Comeback™ began in 1997 at age 30. While working part-time as a psychologist and taking care of her twin daughters, the Duluth, Georgia resident began suffering from painful intestinal pain, weakness, fever and weight loss. Doctors diagnosed Raysa with Crohn’s disease and she was hospitalized on Thanksgiving Day that year.

Raysa’s doctors decided that surgery to remove her colon would be necessary. On December 22, Raysa underwent an ostomy procedure that would remove her colon and part of her rectum.

While the initial surgery was deemed a success, complications arose while Raysa was still in the hospital. Raysa underwent three follow-up procedures.

“This is where I lost all hope,” she recalls. “After the third surgery, I was in so much pain, I didn’t want to live. “ Fortunately for Raysa, her family would not concede defeat so easily. Rallying around her bedside, they provided her with unending love and support.

After her fourth and final surgery, Raysa was eventually stabilized and released for good on February 21, 1998.

Determined to find a way to make the best of it, Raysa began a lengthy recovery with a positive mental outlook. “I was ready to adapt to a new way of life. However, I soon realized that I could resume my former lifestyle with an even greater appreciation and gratitude for the new chance I had been granted. In spite of all my trials and tribulations, I feel that I have been most richly blessed. I am alive today because I have an ostomy.”

Today, Raysa is, in her own words, “the same person I once was.” Raysa’s health continues to amaze her doctors as she has been asymptomatic for 8 years.

She is a professional psychologist and administers neuropsychological tests to English and Spanish speaking patients. Since winning the Great Comebacks™ award in 1999, however, Raysa continues to take an active role in educating the general public and counseling patients and their families about IBD.

She serves as the Head of Telephone Support Network for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America’s Georgia and Tennessee chapters. In January 2000 she began a support group program along with the ET nurse who cared for her during her surgeries. As a hospital volunteer, Raysa visits patients in the Atlanta area who are hospitalized with IBD or undergoing ostomy surgery.

Raysa credits the unyielding support of her friends and family, especially her husband Ron, and their twin daughters, Catherine and Christina, for assisting her in her Great Comeback.