“When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~ Viktor Frankl
I smiled when the doctor told me that I had a disease that I would carry with me for the rest of my life.
He called me with my biopsy results and used the word “Crohn’s”. I had no idea what it meant. But after months of pain that no one could explain, hearing the real name felt like someone had finally turned on the light in a dark room. I wasn’t afraid. I was relieved.
To understand why, I have to go back to the beginning.
It started with a low pain on the right side of my abdomen. Appendicitis runs in my family so that was my first thought. I kept telling the doctors it was my appendix. They kept saying no.
The first doctor looked at me and asked, “Are you under a lot of pressure?”
At that point in my life, a handful of things went wrong at once, and I felt like I was getting hit from all sides. So I said yes, a lot. He nodded as he explained everything and suggested that I rest, maybe take some time off and travel for a few months.
So I did it. I traveled for three months. The pain didn’t go away. If anything, it got worse.
I went to a second doctor. Same answer. It’s stress. Move more, reduce the load, rest more. I did it all. In the middle of the night, I still woke up to a sharp pain in my lower abdomen, which immediately jolted me out of sleep.
A friend recommended a third doctor. I had some hope of entering. Funny enough, he said the same thing. Tension.
That’s when I started to notice something. “It’s stress” is what you hear sometimes when no one can figure out what’s really wrong. Everyone has stress in their lives, so the explanation is always good enough to end the conversation. They say it with no bad intentions. This is the easiest place to land when the real answer is unclear. But I was the one who woke up at 3 a.m. in pain, and I knew it wasn’t in my head.
So this time I backed off. I told him no, it’s not stress. Something is very wrong with me.
He paused, then said, “Okay. If that’s the case, let’s do a CT scan and take a closer look.”
That one sentence changed everything.
The test showed that something was happening in the lower intestine. He sent me to a GI specialist who recommended a colonoscopy to get a biopsy and finally find out what was going on. I did the procedure. A few days later the phone rang. This was the call where I first heard the word “Crohn’s” and where I smiled to my own surprise.
The relief didn’t last long.
As it turns out, it won’t be that simple. Crohn’s is a chronic disease. Simply put, my immune system attacks my own digestive system when it doesn’t like something, causing inflammation and pain as food passes through that part of the gut.
The specialist was direct with me. Because it is chronic, he said he will deal with it for the rest of his life. He told me to take it seriously because if I didn’t there was a real chance I would need surgery to remove the damaged parts of my intestines. He prescribed meds and told me that if I wanted to feel better and get things under control, I needed to change my lifestyle and diet.
Here’s the tricky thing about Crohn’s disease: It’s different for almost everyone who has it, and a lot of it depends on what you eat. Certain things trigger it, but the triggers are not the same for each person. Someone can tolerate alcohol perfectly well, but can’t tolerate something as ordinary as orange juice.
In my case, the troublemakers were alcohol, spicy food, orange juice, fatty fast food and coffee. I didn’t realize it overnight. It took about two years of paying attention, cutting things out, putting them back in, and slowly learning what my body could and couldn’t handle. Coffee was by far the hardest thing to give up.
Around this time I told a friend what I was going through. I expected sympathy. Instead, he looked at me and said, “Dude, you’re lucky.”
I was shocked. How lucky am I to have a chronic illness?
He explained what he meant. As he saw it, it forced me to eat well, take care of my body, and take my health seriously, which most people never do until it’s too late. In his words, I would probably be healthier than the others because I had no choice.
It didn’t land at the time. I was too busy grieving over coffee.
But it’s been about fifteen years, and looking back, I see exactly what he meant. I eliminated from my life the foods that hurt me completely, but not most of the time, but always. Now I went a long stretch without a flare. The discipline imposed on me by the disease did not remain in the kitchen either. It has changed the way I treat my body in general.
I’m not going to pretend that a chronic illness is a gift, and I’m not going to promise to add years to someone’s life. This was my friend’s optimism, not medical fact. But I will say: what I feared the most ended up pushing me toward a healthier life than I could have built on my own.
A few things have stayed with me throughout.
The first is to trust your body and continue to be yourself. If something doesn’t feel right and you keep getting denied, don’t stop asking. I heard “it’s the stress” three times before someone finally ran the test that found the truth. If I had accepted that answer, it would still hurt, or worse. You know your own body better than anyone, and you can push yourself until someone listens.
The second is that a difficult diagnosis can be a strange turning point. Not because the disease itself is good, but because it can force the changes you have been putting off for years. I had to face habits that I would have ignored forever.
And the third is that the silver linings are often invisible while you’re standing in the storm. My friend saw mine before I did. It took me a decade and a half to catch up with him.
If you’re in the middle of your own version, waiting for an answer, feeling dismissed, or sitting with news you didn’t want, I’m not going to tell you it’s secretly wonderful. I’m just telling you that there are situations you can’t change, and that’s when life turns the question on you and asks you who you’re willing to become. Maybe you don’t like the task. But you can look back like I did and realize that it was what changed me for the better.
About Arman Soltani
Arman Soltani is the VP of Design at PastWisdom.com, where he combines his love of technology, design and self-growth to create thoughtful digital experiences. More here: PastWisdom.com
