Emily Tapper

Emily is currently at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. She has ulcerative colitis and has been living with complications from multiple surgeries since 2011. She has spent most of the last two years in the hospital in three different states.

Emily was diagnosed with UC when she was 8 years old. Her health was mostly controlled through medicine and she was in and out of remission for many years. In 2011, when she was 13, she developed toxic mega-colon and had emergency surgery to remove her colon. Complications from this kept her in the hospital for five months. She lived with an iliostomy for nearly two years then had two more surgeries to create a j-pouch, then the final takedown of the iliostomy. Unfortunately, soon after she started developing abscesses and fistulas that began the road she has been on for the past two years. Surgery in January 2015 found that her j-pouch had a twist in it, which caused a weak spot in her intestines and was allowing the fistulas and abscesses to form and keep forming. Finally, she was directed to the Cleveland Clinic for care and her fifth surgery in June 2015 was to create an iliostomy which was intended to allow her body to rid itself of the infections that had been pooling inside her for the past 18 months. Sadly, it is now January 2016 and she is still trying to rid her body of the infections. She is back in Cleveland so that the surgeon can work on this himself. 

Emily is a senior in high school and despite her being in the hospital for so long, has managed to keep up with her class work and will graduate this May 2016 with her twin brother Scott. She is smart, witty, beautiful, very social and wise beyond her years. She loves frogs! and is very girly.