New Patient

After a summer of varied discomforts and several rounds of poking, prodding, and bloodletting, I have my diagnosis, sort of. It appears I have a mild case of colitis. "Appears" because the Doc can't yet rule out Crohn's disease. I'll have another test Monday to determine whether this is or isn't Crohn's. (Please God no!)

In either event, what I have is, as I said, mild so far, and very treatable. Treatment means taking three pills a day for the rest of my life. Now granted, this is far from the worst regimen one could submit to, and I do have the insurance to cover the pills. Some people with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases suffer far more than I have or, hopefully, will. Still, I feel like something about my life has changed dramatically.

I've always been a healthy person--probably a lot healthier than I ought to be considering some excesses of my early years. Never been hospitalized overnight, never suffered from a chronic (physical) condition, never had any significant trauma. My blood pressure, pulse, and lipid profile have always been exemplary. I've never been overweight, and have always exercised somewhat regularly. Now, while I'm hardly at death's door, I will have this to contend with as long as I live. I will always be an IBD patient. Until now, illness was always transient.

In researching colitis on the web, I noticed that on discussion boards for IBD sufferers, posters often include in their signatures their condition, date of diagnosis, time in remission, if applicable, and the treatments they use or have used. That suggests to me that most of the time their illness hovers near the front of their minds. I am hoping I never reach that point. I don't want my condition to become a pillar of my identity.

Provided things don't get much worse, that probably won't happen. But popping my daily dose of antiinflamatories will remind me that it could. I will live under the shadow of illness. That will hardly change the outward parts of my life, but it will add a new and lingering unease to an innner life that decidedly has enough.

I live now on different terms than I did for most of my life. But I will adjust. After all, I can still fish.