25-year-old Paula O’Neill had been modeling since she was 20 years old. At the height of her career, she was modeling swimwear and even got to be one of the finalists in the Miss Scotland beauty pageant. O’Neill even had plans to further her career beyond modeling – she had already applied and made plans to enter a nursing program after Miss Scotland ended.
Around that time was also when O’Neill began to fall ill.
She’d already begun experiencing strange, phantom pains for the past year or two, but chose to suffer through them, the stomach cramps, the vomiting, the cold sweats, and even the severe weight loss.
When O’Neill reached the worst stages of her disease, she could barely eat. “The most I could manage sometimes was an ice pole or some jelly,” she remembered. “I was going to the toilet 30 to 40 times a day and the stomach pains were unbearable. I was so frail and ill.”
In the past, everyone had always told her she had irritable bowel syndrome, and that she should just avoid spicy foods and carbonated drinks.
But O’Neill’s symptoms kept getting worse, which prompted her to go to the hospital.
It was there that she was finally diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a disease that causes the digestive tract to become inflamed and can only be managed with steroids. The condition, unfortunately, has no medical cure.
O’Neill improved tremendously while she received steroid treatment in the hospital, but her appearance began to change drastically as a result of the steroids.
“[The steroids] have side effects such as ‘moon face,’ ‘camel back’ and ‘apple belly,’” O’Neill explained, “but that’s the least of my worries. I just want to be better again.”
Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with O’Neill.
Many people – both strangers and people close to O’Neill – critiqued her new appearance. No one knew what to think, and O’Neill herself even figured that they were all thinking, “Paula’s really let herself go.” She had suddenly transformed from being too thin to being a “big girl.”
“I heard comments through the grapevine,” O’Neill admitted, “but I also heard that people I don’t really know were messaging people I do know, asking what was wrong with me.”
O’Neill has refused to let these comments get the best of her. Now that her symptoms are under control, she’s looking forward to resuming all the fun activities she used to do before her diagnosis – like going to Ibiza for holiday – and then returning home to be a nurse in the exact ward to which she was admitted for her ulcerative colitis.
“I just want to get better and live my life as normal and, thankfully, that might hap
