People who suffer from chronic health issues know just how frustrating it can be, and how it can impact virtually every aspect of their life. It can be even more difficult when the chronic health issue is something that has not yet been diagnosed because it adds the element of the unknown that can be scary. Of course, that is on top of having to constantly go through medical procedures, medications, and other efforts to try to figure out what is going on with their body.

That is what filmmaker and documentarian, Adrian Thiessen was experiencing. He suffered from severe gastrointestinal issues for around a decade. His condition would cause him to lose blood to the point where he would need transfusions, and every time he ate, he was at risk of serious pain and discomfort.

Needless to say, this was a major problem.

Unfortunately, his doctors couldn’t figure out the problem. They ran various tests, tried different medications, and worked diligently to try to figure it all out, with no relief. In an interview with Futurism, he said:

“Sometimes, it would seem like an allergy or an intolerance. Sometimes it would seem like an [inflammatory bowel disease] situation, like a Crohn’s Disease. I never really had a concrete diagnosis. A few doctors said I had Crohn’s, and then other ones that I didn’t; it didn’t fit the criteria.”

He was able to find some relief by drastically changing his diet. After a lot of trial and error, he found that eliminating all insoluble fiber as well as anything containing fructan, which is a fermentable sugar found in many popular foods, including garlic, wheat, and onions, provided him with significant relief.

The diet was extreme, but it was well worth the inconvenience to get relief from his chronic issues.

He explains:

“I stuck to that for a long time, for a few years, and I had no big flare issues. It seemed like it was working.”

Unfortunately, in 2024, he had another flare up that brought him to the hospital despite the fact that he hadn’t changed his diet.

He says:

“I had another event — lost a lot of blood, was severely anemic. Almost immediately had to go to the ER, had blood transfusions, had iron infusions, investigative scopes and scans.”

All these tests revealed nothing as to why he was having problems again. So, the doctors suggested trying something that he hadn’t tried before. A camera that came in the form of a large pill. This PillCam was swallowed and then transmitted the video that it captured to a receiver he wore on his belt. The hope is that the doctors could watch the video and spot something somewhere along his digestive tract that other scans had missed. The PillCam is designed to travel throughout the digestive tract and then come out as waste on the other end.

Thiessen monitored the waste, but didn’t see it come out after a day. Then two days and still nothing. As the days passed, he thought (and hoped) that he had just somehow missed it, but the doctors wanted to be sure, so they scheduled an x-ray.

Thiessen said:

“I went to get this X-ray at 14 days, and I was joking with the X-ray tech, like, ‘if you see some big glowy camera in there, let me know.’ But no part of me thought that it was still in there.”

Sure enough, they found the PillCam still lodged in his intestines. The doctors prescribed steroids to try to get rid of any inflammation, hoping that this would release the PillCam, but it didn’t work. They hoped that it would eventually work itself out, but that didn’t seem to be happening.

So, after this camera that was supposed to remain inside his body for a few days at most remained lodged for over 70 days, the doctors opted to surgically remove the device, and its a good thing they did. He explained what happened when he woke up.

“When I woke up, the surgeon was like, you absolutely needed that surgery, we just over 30 centimeters (just over 12 inches) of damaged bowel that the camera was stuck between, unmovable. There was no way it was coming out without cutting it out, there was no way it was coming out without cutting it out.”

None of that damage had shown up on the camera footage that was recorded, but once the doctors had opened him up, they not only found why the camera was stuck, but also what was causing his health issues for the past decade.

This part of his intestines were in an area that is difficult to see on scans, which explains why nothing was found in the past. Once he had this section of his intestines removed, the problems he was having should go away.

Of course, only time will tell if he will experience further issues in the future, but for now, he is undoubtedly enjoying his new life without the constant worry of having severe digestive issues every time he takes a bite. Understandably, he is being very cautious when it comes to introducing new foods into his diet, but for now at least, all seems to be going well.

And it’s all thanks to a camera getting trapped in his body for over two months.

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