Waking Up
It’s August 13, 2015 and I’m waking up from, possibly, the best sleep I’ve ever had, I’m talking a where-am-I-what-year-is-it kind of situation, when I realize I’m just waking up from my colonoscopy, and I’ve been asleep for less than an hour. Having been put under before, I knew the drill. I’m usually pretty foggy and sleepy the rest of the day and may not remember much that is said to me.
This time was different.
I remember clearly what happened and what was said to me once I woke up. It seems like those words were spoken and turned into a little cloud, hovering over and raining down on me from that day forward. Crohn’s disease.
Like many people, I had very little knowledge of this disease, so I did what most people do (but nobody should), I googled it! I was very successful at scaring the crap out of myself during the drive home from the procedure.
According to what I read, through no fault of my own, my immune system lost her glasses and can’t make out the difference between harmful, foreign bacteria in my GI tract, and harmless bacteria that usually helps digestion. Since she can’t tell the difference she just attacks all of them! Harmful, harmless. Who can tell, right? Also, through no fault of my own, this causes chronic inflammation and the kicker is that it’s not just in the gut, but this little bacteria war can present itself anywhere in the GI tract. And scariest of all, it puts me at an increased risk for developing cancer. Did I mention there is no known cure for Crohn’s?
This was a lot of information to process in the short amount of time that had passed since waking up from the procedure, but being the kind of person that I am, I allowed myself to freak out for a few hours and quickly gathered myself, took a deep breath and repeated something that I tell myself on an almost daily basis:
Everything Will Be Okay!