Her mum, Wendy McKern, said the 12 years since had "been a struggle."

"It was a hard journey, because being a young girl, they don't want to talk about what's going on with their bowel," Mrs McKern said.

"She's a lot better and mature now about it now, but it's still really hard.

"She's been on a lot of different treatments, she's had two pregnancies, one of which saw her end up in St Vincent's Hospital as she was really unwell."

Mrs McKern is part of an Orange volunteer group which looks to shine a light on inflammatory bowel diseases like colitis and crohn's.

"Colitis is an autoimmune disease, which means your immune system has gone haywire somehow and it attacks the cells within the digestive tract, or the colon," Mr McKern said.

"It means the bowel ulcerates and bleeding occurs, which can lead to malnutrition and a lot of time on the toilet. It's quite debilitating.

As part of the volunteer group, she and another member of the group, Cassandra Anslow, were out at the Orange City Centre last weekend, doing their best to inform people aware of the signs and symptoms to watch out for.

"People look like they're ok, but they're really not," Mrs McKern said.

"We want to put it out there so people are aware it, because it can be a bit of an invisible illness. People look like they're ok, but they're really not."

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