96: The Hirschsprung’s Hour with Tom Richard - Episode 9696: The Hirschsprung’s Hour with Tom Richard - Episode 96
UK Health Radio Podcast
Tom Richard catches up with Aimee Morrisby, who shares her rare long-segment Hirschsprung’s story, from extensive surgeries and infertility to studying nutrition and writing a memoir. The conversation touches on chronic illness, women’s health, advocacy and building a busy, fulfilling life with just 60cm of bowel.
44:19•15 Sept 2026
Thriving with 60cm of Bowel: Aimee Morrisby’s Rare Disease Journey and Memoir
Episode Overview
- Hirschsprung’s disease can vary widely in severity, and rare long-segment cases like Aimee’s show that thriving is still possible.
- Understanding where nutrients are absorbed helps people without a colon use food more effectively to support immunity and energy.
- Women with Hirschsprung’s may face additional reproductive challenges from repeated pelvic and abdominal surgeries and benefit from early fertility assessment.
- Writing about lived experience can uncover forgotten medical trauma and offer a powerful way to turn long-term pain into purposeful advocacy.
- People with chronic illness are more than their diagnosis and can build careers, families and ambitious plans alongside their health conditions.
“I want people to know that they are not that diagnosis. They are not their diagnosis.”
Curious about how others manage their sobriety journey while juggling serious health challenges? This episode of The Hirschsprung’s Hour spotlights Aimee Morrisby, who lives with a rare long-segment form of Hirschsprung’s disease and just 60cm of ileum, yet runs two businesses and a busy family life. Tom Richard reconnects with Aimee, who first appeared back when the show was starting out.
This time, the focus is on how her life has changed since studying health science and nutrition in her thirties and how that study reshaped her understanding of food, immunity and chronic illness. She explains that she grew up "just being told to feed, just feed," without being taught how different foods support a body missing a colon.
The conversation gets raw as Aimee talks through multiple surgeries, a full colectomy at seven, years of infertility, and finally a hysterectomy in 2020 after extensive scar tissue and endometriosis. She shares the emotional toll of repeated hospital stays during COVID and the mental health spiral that followed. Yet, she now channels that history into her work and writing, turning "pain into purpose" through nutrition coaching and advocacy.
A big section of the chat centres on Aimee’s upcoming memoir, written in a 10-day burst in Sydney where she poured out 60,000 words and revisited childhood procedures, life-support stays and old triage notes her mum recently unearthed. She describes the process as exhausting but necessary, aiming her story at people with Hirschsprung’s, especially women, and anyone living with chronic illness who’s been dismissed by the medical system.
You’ll also hear about her plans for a future book tour timed around Rare Disease Day and International Women’s Day, and her hope to stand in front of parents and clinicians to show what "60 centimetres of ileum can look like" in adult life. If you’re balancing recovery, health issues and big dreams, this chat might leave you asking: how much more could be possible for you too?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.