Kerin Rose Gold Lost Her Colon And Saved Herself, One Jewel At A Time

There have only been two phone calls in my life that have truly freaked me out.

In 2009, I woke up to a random UK number at 7AM on a Sunday. It was Rihanna, just saying hi! That was the good one. Three years later, my gastroenterologist called to tell me I needed to get my colon removed. That was the bad one.

Doctors don’t just ring you up all willy-nilly to explain why they need to take out your large intestine. A decade earlier, I was diagnosed with a severe case of Ulcerative Colitis. (If hot girls have IBS, the really hot ones have Chrons or Colitis). My body railed against me by covering my colon in massive ulcers, which made me feel like I was perpetually digesting glass. It caused massive internal bleeding… I’d tell you to use your imagination, but to make the gravity of this situation clear, I was violently shitting out a dangerous amount of blood on a daily basis. In hindsight, I spent most of my twenties on the verge of death.

In 2008, after dozens of therapies all failed, a brand-new infusion drug called Remicade promised to cure me. And might also kill me! I signed the fuck up. I wanted to live, even if I had to die trying. Spoiler alert: it worked! Sure, I had a predictable post-traumatic breakdown and got fired from my day job. But in the process of figuring out my life, I started making some sunglasses that changed the present-day eyewear field in such a dramatic way that I have a Diet Prada-worthy folder on my desktop of knockoffs from fast fashion companies, billion-dollar social media brands, and even your favorite racist high-fashion Italian design duo. That’s showbiz, baby!