Living with death

One of the side effects of living with a disease that can kill you at any time, is that it changes a persons perspective on life and death.

I was so young when I was first diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and it nearly killed me a couple times. My earlier blog entries talk about those traumatic experiences in detail.

Since I was only 21 and had faced death, I think a part of how I saw the world changed in my essence. Death was no longer scary, just a fact of life. I always felt and knew instinctually that a long life was not likely in the cards for me. That knowing brings with it a kind of comfort most people don’t understand.

Then last night I got a call from my specialist that told me my biopsies from four months ago were not good. I need urgent blood work and another colonoscopy so we can biopsy the bad area again. The bad area, with the bad ‘potentially cancerous’ cells, was considered for removal during my resection last July. Too bad they didn’t take it.

Everyone hears the cancer word and immediately are terrified. I can’t say that I am. I almost feel like I have been expecting the worse for 20+ years and now it’s here.

If I die tomorrow I feel I have lived a good life, helped others, given back, and made some minor impacts in the world. But I really don’t want to go yet. And that makes me happy. I am happy that I want to live. For a while not that long ago, I didn’t.

I know these ‘funny cells’ as my doctor likes to describe, is not the end of the world. I know many people who have had worse and more definitive findings and they have come through healthy and well. I know this is early and if I need another resection, well, I’ve been there and done that. I can do it again.

It’s funny how now that the bad news is here, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I’m kind of numb and accustomed to this. The lifelong feeling of dread in the back of a chronically ill persons mind is a daily thing. Most days you ignore it or pause it, but the feeling, the voice, it’s still there. It has a home.

Living with chronic illness is not easy. Any day your plans can change on a dime. But what I’ve gained from this disease? It’s immense.

I’ve gained empathy, resiliency, knowledge… hopefulness and positivity. I am able to recognize the impact of disability on others. I understand that I have to live each day to the fullest because I don’t know what the next day, the next hour, will bring. I try to treat other people as humans, with caring and love, hope and support. I hope by doing this, they pay it forward too. And slowly, we work towards making this sometimes nasty world a better place to be.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

Stay safe everyone.

Kindness and love make the world go round