You are out and about, and suddenly you have an urgent need to use a bathroom. It is a race against the clock to find the closest one.
While we have all experienced this, what if you were at risk of feeling an urgent need for a washroom every time you left home?
That urgency is one of the realities of living with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, the two most common forms of inflammatory bowel disease. People with these diseases may need to use a washroom up to 20 times a day.
Today, these diseases have no cures. Crohn’s and colitis can cause severe diarrhea, constipation, fever, rectal bleeding and blood in the stool, unrelenting abdominal pain and cramps, weight loss, fatigue and sleep problems. Treatment options are limited and may stop working over time. Surgery to remove part of the intestines is a frequent need.
The anxiety of an accident due to an urgent need to go to the washroom leads many of the 322,000+ people in Canada living with Crohn’s or colitis to stay home. When they do go out, they often plan their activities and route around publicly accessible washroom locations.
The GoHere® app from Crohn’s and Colitis Canada is designed to make lives easier for people with Crohn’s and colitis by helping locate nearby washrooms. This free app was launched in 2015 and has been downloaded 46,000 times. It has a database of more than 3,600 publicly available washroom locations.
GoHere shows the nearest available washrooms to your current location. You can also map a route and see the location of washrooms along the way. The locations of the listed washrooms have shown up almost 2.5 million times.
GoHere reduces the stress and anxiety associated with managing urgent bowel symptoms while in public, something that Justine Giguère of Montreal knows first-hand. Diagnosed with colitis at the age of 23 in 2021, she discovered the GoHere app and uses it to find out where she could go in case of emergency.
In 2023, she started a new role as a sales representative for L’ORÉAL, which requires her to be on the road five days a week to visit clients on the south shore of Montreal. She was stressed at the thought of being on the road for appointments and suddenly needing to go to the washroom – especially when her colitis acts up and creates an urgent need for a bowel movement. The solution: the GoHere app.
Justine says: “Initially, I would skip meals on the road so as not to worry about needing a washroom. With GoHere, my stress is reduced, I can eat and not worry. Even if I have a flare, I can still go out because I have a solution to manage an urgent need for a bathroom. It’s great to know that I can use the bathroom in participating stores without buying anything because they’re part of GoHere. It’s a quick, no questions asked solution.”
The GoHere app is free and available for iPhone and Android devices. Learn more at go-here.ca. Organizations interested in being listed should email gohere@crohnsandcolitis.ca
This article was originally published in Global Heroes in October 2024