“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl
I smiled when the doctor told me I had a disease that I would carry with me for the rest of my life.
He called with my biopsy results, and the word he used was “Crohn’s.” I had no idea what it was. But after months of suffering that no one could explain, hearing its real name felt like someone had finally turned on the light in a dark room. I was not afraid. I was relieved.
To understand why, I have to go back to the beginning.
It started with low pain on the right side of my abdomen. Appendicitis runs in my family, so that was my first thought. I kept telling doctors it must be my appendix. They kept telling me it wasn’t.
The first doctor looked at me and asked, “Are you stressed?”
At that point in my life, a handful of things were going wrong at once and I felt like I was being hit from every angle. So I said yes, a lot. He nodded and explained everything and suggested I relax, maybe take some time off and travel for a few months.
I did so. I traveled for three months. The pain did not go away. If anything, it got worse.
I went to the second doctor. Same answer. It’s stressful. Exercise more, reduce your workload, get more rest. I’ve done it all. I still wake up in the middle of the night with sharp pains in my lower abdomen that wake me up.
A friend suggested a third doctor. I was walking in hoping for something. Funny enough, he said the same thing. stress
By then I had begun to notice something. “It’s stress” is what you sometimes hear when someone doesn’t understand what’s really wrong. Everyone has stress in their lives, so the explanation is always appropriate enough to end the conversation. It is not said with bad intentions. This is the easiest place to land if the real answer isn’t obvious. 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 pushed back. I told him, no, it’s not stress. Something is really wrong with me.
He paused, then said, “Okay. If so, let’s do a CT scan and take a closer look.”
That one sentence changed everything.
The scan showed that something was going on in my lower intestine. He referred me to a GI specialist, who recommended a colonoscopy so they could take a biopsy and finally figure out what was going on. I did the procedure. A few days later the phone rang. That was the call where I first heard the word “Crohn’s” and where, to my own surprise, I laughed.
The relief didn’t last long.
It turns out, it’s not going to be that easy. 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 intestine.
The specialist was direct with me. Because it’s chronic, he said, it’s something you’ll manage for the rest of your life. He told me to take it seriously because if I didn’t, there was a very real possibility that I would need surgery to remove the damaged parts of my intestine. He prescribed medication and told me that if I wanted to feel better and get things under control, I needed to change my lifestyle and my diet.
Here’s the tricky thing about Crohn’s: It’s different for everyone who has it, and a lot of it comes down to food. Certain things trigger it, but the triggers are not the same from person to person. Someone can be perfectly fine with alcohol but can’t tolerate something as simple as orange juice.
In my case, the troublemakers turned out to be alcohol, spicy foods, orange juice, fatty fast food, and coffee. I didn’t figure that out overnight. It took about two years of focusing, cutting things out, adding them back, and slowly learning what my body could and couldn’t handle. Giving up coffee was the hardest.
At the time, I told a friend what I was going through. I expected sympathy. Instead, he looked at me and said, “Dude, you’re so lucky.”
I was stunned. How on earth was I lucky to have a chronic disease?
He explained what he meant. The way he saw it, it forced me to eat well, pay attention to my body, and take my health seriously in a way that most people don’t until it’s too late. In his words, I would probably get better than the rest of them because I had no choice.
At that time, it did not land. I was grieving over coffee.
But it’s been almost fifteen years now, and looking back I understand what he meant. I have completely cut unhealthy foods out of my life, not most of the time, but all of the time. I have gone a long stretch now without a flare up. The discipline that the disease forced upon me did not stay in the kitchen either. How I treat my body in general has changed.
I’m not going to pretend a chronic illness is a gift, and I’m not going to make any promises about adding years to someone’s life. That was my friend’s optimism, not medical truth. But I will say this: the thing I was most afraid of pushed me toward a healthier life that I would have created on my own.
A few of these things have stayed with me.
The first is to trust your body and advocate for yourself. If something feels wrong and you’re getting brushed off, don’t stop asking. I heard three times “stress it” before someone finally ran the test to find out the truth. If I had accepted that answer I would still be in pain, or worse. You know your own body better than anyone and are allowed to push yourself until no one listens.
The second is that a difficult diagnosis can be a strange kind of turning point. Not because illness itself is good, but because it can force changes you’ve been putting off for years. It made my face habit that I would have happily ignored forever.
And the third is that silver linings are often invisible when you’re standing in the middle of the storm. My friend saw me before I could. It took me a decade and a half to catch him.
If you’re in the middle of your own version of this, waiting for answers, feeling fired up, or sitting with news you don’t want, I won’t tell you it’s secretly wonderful. I’ll just tell you that there are situations you can’t change, and that’s when life throws the question back at you and asks who you want to be. You may not like the assignment. But maybe you can look back, as I have, and realize that it changed you for the better.
about Arman Soltani
Arman Soltani is VP of Design at PastWisdom.com, where he combines his love of technology, design and self-growth to create thoughtful digital experiences. Explore more at PastWisdom.com
