One of the questions I’ve gotten over the years about my Crohn’s Disease is
Why don’t you just stop being sick?
What a question.
My fantasy answer is: why don’t you stop being an inconsiderate asshole? But that’s not the answer you give to your homeroom teacher in high school who still wields power over whether or not you graduate.
The rational, pull your glasses off your nose and pensively tilt your chin whilst shuffling through a pile of research papers answer is something more like: “Research shows that Crohn’s Disease cannot be cured, only managed. Check your privilege, and kindly stop assuming that this invisible autoimmune illness is being faked.”
The answer most likely to come out of your mouth when you’re in the middle of a flareup and have no energy is more like “I can’t.”
Finding a real answer to that question is much more difficult.
When you’re diagnosed with a incurable disease, you’re in it for the long-haul. Without even thinking about it, your mindset shifts. There’s no end date to this diagnosis. All you can think about is how this disease changes your day-to-day life.
Your identity shifts. You go from being you—a person who is fundamentally healthy—to being a Sick Person™.
When you focus on the disease, it becomes the center of your world.
Taking pills becomes your new alarm clock. Visits to the doctor mark the change of the seasons. New fashions are dictated by whatever’s easiest to accommodate your symptoms, or your treatments, or whatever.
Life can shift from being your world, to being a Crohn’s World that you’re just living in.
The thing is though, you’re still a person. You’re you. Same hopes and dreams, same likes and dislikes, same family and friends.
The temptation is to make Crohn’s your whole world, when really it’s just a part of it. Yes, a very influential part, but only a part.
If Crohn’s becomes everything, you risk trapping yourself in the role of “Crohn’s patient” for the rest of your life.
And if you do that—if your mind ONLY thinks of yourself as a person with Crohn’s Disease—you will ALWAYS be sick, even if your body heals.
If you make the disease your identity, you can never escape it.
Step one: the disease isn’t you.