Greeting,

My name is Dino, I am 25 years old and I am a healthcare professional, with a Master's degree in Pharmacy. In my second year of college (at the age of 20), I was diagnosed with incurable autoimmune Crohn's disease. However, before I was officially diagnosed, my illness started much earlier.

Even as a child, I always had stomach pains, which others, including doctors, attributed to my 'unhealthy diet' or 'having eaten something bad', so even they sometimes get stomach pains. This farce continued until my second year of college, when I lost 20 kilos in 4 months, couldn't get out of bed, would sleep 16 hours a day, couldn't leave the house due to a great fear of diarrhea, my CRP was over 80, and so on for months. Although I was a model student, that year I failed 5 subjects because I couldn't function normally.

After seeing 3 different doctors, one doctor told me to come to the Clinical Hospital Center where they would examine me in detail. After 10 days in the hospital, my suspicion that I had Crohn's disease was confirmed.

It didn't shock me at the time, I had the mentality of 'well, at least now I know what it is, they'll give me medication and I can get on with my life'. However, the shock I didn't have then resulted in the delayed shock I experienced after the first, then the second, third, fourth and fifth relapses of the disease.

Every year I would end up in the hospital, I would often faint, once they couldn't even wake me up from the amount of blood I lost. I live in Zadar, but my gastroenterologist worked in Split. I still remember my GP telling my parents that 'I won't make it to Split'. But at least I was riding in an ambulance, which I always wondered how it felt. Spoiler: not pleasant at all.

Although they immediately put me on expensive biological therapies, two of them stopped working within a year and a half. I'm now on my third one and I'm running out of pharmacological treatment options, given that there are only 5 biological therapies available for Crohn's disease in the Republic of Croatia. After that, there are surgeries and the 'famous' stoma, which, as a 25-year-old, I don't want to live with for the rest of my life.

Then I decided to save money for the revolutionary stem cell therapy, which is unfortunately very expensive, and although I have saved some of my money, it is not even close to covering the cost of the treatment. That's why I decided to start this page in order to reach my goal as soon as possible.

I want to thank everyone in advance who would help me because it means a lot to me. Even if I received one donation, it would mean a lot to me.