As a footballer, she bounces across the field with the Dutch Lionesses. But top athlete Desiree van Lunteren is not always a chunk of energy. She has Crohn's disease.
“I last had an attack of abdominal pain a month ago. I was at home in my apartment in Freiburg, Germany, the city where I've been playing football for a year. The pain is nauseating. All I want is to make myself as small as possible and lie on the bed. And when I call my boyfriend, he says, "It'll be okay, just take it easy." And taking it easy is all I can do at that moment. Waiting for the pain to go away.
I grew up in a real football family. My father, my mother and my older brothers all played soccer, so it made sense that I started playing too. My talent was quickly discovered and when I was sixteen I already played for the AZ football club and I was in the Orange squad under nineteen. Birthdays and going out were no longer an option for me from that moment on, football was my life.
In fact I already had stomach pains at that time and I went to the doctor a few times. "It's probably because of the amount of energy drinks you drink," he said. It could be. Some times it went well, other times it went bad. I could not discover to what extent the energy drinks had an influence on this. I scheduled an investigation for the complaints when I was eighteen. But with that I wanted to wait until the European Championship was over, because we were training just as hard for that. I had already made the switch to Telstar and I really enjoyed it there.
But at a tournament with the Oranje girls just before the European Championship, things went completely wrong. We were warming up before a game against Germany and I was in so much pain that I almost crawled across the field. Despite the painkillers the team doctor had already given me in the locker room, all I could do was bend over in pain. I couldn't stand up straight and I was sick to my stomach. And although I always wanted to -like top athletes do- just keep going, I really couldn't anymore.
Back home I was examined as soon as possible. The doctors entered my intestines with a camera and on the monitor we all saw – my parents, the doctors and myself – that everything was wrong. My whole intestines were full of inflammation, already in the first part, but actually throughout my entire intestines. “Desiree, you have Crohn's disease, I was told a little later that day.” But what that would mean for the rest of my life, I didn't know at the time. I reacted quite calmly, took the patient brochures and went home with my parents.
My team doctor was shocked when I emailed her the results of the investigation. At the time I still had no idea of the seriousness of this disease. I was a bit taken aback and thought:'We'll all see.'”
The trouble with Crohn's is that you don't really know what the triggers are to which your body reacts with abdominal pain. In some people, there is a clear link between what they eat and when they experience discomfort. That is not the case with me. I can basically eat and drink anything, even Chinese and a glass of wine every now and then. Also, it was searching with the medication that I was given from the moment of the result. I got pills and a shot. But that year, almost nothing seemed to help and I ended up in the hospital emergency room almost every night with so much pain. Then it seemed to go away for a while, but the next night the pain was so severe that I reported myself again. In the meantime, I lost a lot of weight. The attacks were not just abdominal pain, but sometimes I had to go to the bathroom 15 times a night and I had diarrhea. And sometimes I even had a bucket hanging under me because I had to throw up at the same time. I have never felt so miserable as during that period. I felt exhausted.
In the meantime, I was also concerned. How was I supposed to keep playing football with this disease? And if I couldn't exercise anymore, what the hell would I do with my life? I only just played in the Dutch national team. Wouldn't this mean the end of my career in football?
But no matter how bad I felt, I almost never skipped a workout. I set my eyes on infinity and just went out onto the field. don't think too much and just do it. I had just been given this huge opportunity, I absolutely did not want to let it take me away.
We got the Crohn's reasonably under control with medication, but then the doctors found out that there was a narrowing in the part from my small to my large intestine. That was dangerous, because if that narrowing became more severe, my stool would no longer be able to find its way. There was nothing for it but an operation to have a piece of my intestine removed. In 2013 I went under the knife.
After this operation and with a combination of different medicines I can say that I am doing reasonably well now. Although I don't know any better than that every now and then I just have terrible stomachaches. That remains and I'm just trying to accept that. Just like I think maybe my body needs more time to recover after a hard workout, that I'm more tired than others and that sometimes I might be a little slower on the pitch too. But those are all things that I think they are and of course I can never know for sure. Just like the tips some people give me. One says that I have to take certain herbs and my mother recently suggested that I should fry my meat in coconut fat from now on. It's nice that they think along, but I don't think it really helps me.
I do notice that stress does have a negative effect on me. In the period before an important match, the chance that it will bother me is greater. That is why I try to avoid stress as much as possible, but of course that is not always possible. There are often enough matches where I have so much trouble in the locker room that I take painkillers before the match. Like in the final of the last European Championship, for example. Most people might think that I'm just really nervous and that's why I have a stomachache, but I know better. Strangely enough, I now also know that it helps if my body has good blood circulation, so as soon as I am busy running across the field, it usually decreases.
Not many people know that I have this disease. I'm not one to hear you complain. And if I do tell, it is difficult for outsiders to imagine what I then experience. It can be very bad one day and much better the next. My teammates know it well and luckily I can always go to my girlfriend and roommate Inez Kuip. She immediately notices when I am in pain, because I am a lot more modest than usual. I think it's a nice and safe feeling that she knows me so well.
I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend for a year now. The past year has been going really well for me. So I don't even think he can imagine how bad things can get. I just Skyped with the national coach. She asked me if I had thought about what I should do if my stomach hurts during the World Cup. I understand her question, but to be honest:I'm not concerned with that at all. There's no point in anticipating things that aren't happening yet, is there? I may be too sober for that. I'm doing my best and hope to be there in good condition soon. And we'll see how it goes.
Desiree van Lunteren made his debut in the Dutch national team in 2012, in a match against France. In 2017 she became sportswoman of the year in Amsterdam and she participated in the European Championships where the lionesses became first. She has now played more than two hundred games and scored more than a hundred goals. In the summer of 2020, she announced that she was pregnant and in December 2020 she gave birth to her first child. In March 2021 it was announced that she will no longer return to Ajax, but will switch to PSV.
Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that can affect the entire digestive tract and affect the intestinal wall. Crohn's disease is becoming more common, especially in Western countries. There are currently more than 80,000 people in the Netherlands with chronic intestinal inflammation. This is about 1 in 200 people. Of these, just under half have Crohn's disease. Crohn's disease is usually discovered between the ages of 15 and 30. However, it can develop at any age. The disease is slightly more common in women than in men. About a fifth to a quarter of the patients are younger than 20 years. The symptoms are:diarrhea (often mixed with blood and mucus), abdominal pain, anemia, fatigue, weight loss, urgency/faecal incontinence, fever, mouth ulcers. More information via the Gastrointestinal Foundation:mlds.nl
Text:Santé/Merel Brons, Photo:GettyImages
