We’re bombarded with swimsuit photos in the summer months, but very few look like Bethany Townsend’s bikini shot, which has gone totally viral with more than 220,000 likes on the Crohn’s and Colitis U.K. Facebook page.
Townsend is a 23-year-old makeup artist and aspiring model, reports CBS News. She looks amazing and toned in her black bikini, but she also happens to be sporting two colostomy bags. Townsend was diagnosed with Chron’s disease at the age of 11 and had 16 inches of her bowel removed. After five more operations and a burst bowel four years ago, she got the colostomy bags.
According to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are both inflammatory bowel diseases where the body’s immune system mistakes beneficial or benign cells for harmful ones, attacking itself and causing damage to the GI tract. Crohn’s disease may affect any or all of the GI tract, from the mouth to the anus, whereas colitis is specific to the large intestine. Both are extremely damaging if left untreated like Townsend’s, which she says went misdiagnosed from age three to age 11.
Major props to Townsend for bravely and proudly showing off her body—colostomy bags and all—and giving a voice to a struggle that can be debilitating for the nearly 1.4 million sufferers in the U.S. and 261,000 in the U.K. alone.
“Finally after three and a half years, I decided that my colostomy bags shouldn't control my life,” she says in the Facebook post. “So when I went to Mexico with my husband in December last year I finally showed I wasn't ashamed. Still hoping for a cure.”
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