Lindsey Vonn: My pain was ‘out of control’ during hospitalization

Lindsey Vonn discussed the illness that put her in the hospital for two days earlier this month in a first-person written report published by the Denver Post on Monday.

Vonn was admitted to a hospital in Vail, Colo., on Monday Nov. 12 and was released two days later. She says she had been to the hospital three previous times before finally being admitted.

While in the hospital, Vonn was tested for several intestinal pain. She says it was feared she had Crohn’s disease.

“There was a lot of pain. In the hospital, I was on morphine and Percocet, I was super drugged up and the pain was out of control,” Vonn wrote in her Denver Post report. “Thankfully they eventually got me on the right antibiotics that helped me get better.

“After I got out of the hospital, I was getting tired walking down the hall of my condo, let alone walking up a couple stairs. I had to stop every five steps. I felt like I was 100 years old, and I couldn’t even think about skiing.”

Vonn slowly began the process of training again, and she says she is getting ready to compete in Lake Louise, Alberta, this week, though she doesn’t know what to expect.

When I first heard that Vonn was being tested for “severe intestinal pain” and that she said she had “pain all over her body and that her bones [were] hurting,” I was worried she had Crohn’s disease. I experienced many similar symptoms for years before finally being diagnosed with the disease during an emergency surgery in 2008. It doesn’t seem like that is what Vonn has because, though it is manageable, it’s a literal pain in the butt. Vonn later wrote in a post on her Facebook page that she had an infection in her stomach. Hopefully it’s all gone and she’ll be able to return to good health.