Learning to Live in the Present Moment - From Crohn's Disease

I pushed the IV pole out of the way to get a better view of the surgeon.

"But, at this rate, by this time next year . . ." I started out.

He cut me off and taught me the most important lesson I've learned as a Crohn's patient.

"Don't think about next year," he said. "The biggest challenge you'll ever have with Crohn's is learning to live in the present moment."

Before I was finally diagnosed at age 31 - after 20 or more years of suffering - I was the ultimate planner. Not only were my taxes done on time, they were submitted at least a month early. I had goals written down for five years in the future and index cards of grocery lists.

Then came the diagnosis. Then the first surgery. Then four more.

I am still a planner and plotter who writes down goals. My brain likes to catalogue. What's different now is that I have learned to savor the good moments. Whereas a major thunderstorm right before a corporate picnic I had planned would have sent my blood pressure soaring at one point, now I mostly shrug my shoulders. This doesn't mean that I pay my bills late or don't arrive for work on time, however.

The second thing I learned is to ban the four-letter F word. It's spelled F-A-I-R.

If you rounded up 100 people at random and asked each one if everything in his or her life was fair, I doubt you'd get a single affirmative response. This is because what's a disaster to one person might well be just a minor inconvenience for another. Everybody has problems.

I found the four-letter word just too cumbersome to tote around. In a perfectly just world, none of us would suffer from Crohn's disease, gain 30 pounds on steroids or be repeatedly chopped up like a chicken to remove diseased tissue. But we don't live in a world that's perfectly anything.

Another significant change in my life is learning to live peacefully in a mini-world with medical personnel. When I'm in this world, my main residence might be the hospital. My "second home" could be inside a CT scanner or a bay in the emergency room.

Over the years, I've spent a lot of time in this environment. I change gears once I enter it and immediately start using what I call my Crohn's medical vocabulary. My relatives have no idea what's transpiring and probably wonder if the staff has given me too many painkillers.

While I'm in this alternate world, I morph into a focused professional patient with a job. My job is to do everything the best I can to get better. I will admit that outsiders - people who aren't sick - probably resent the coziness of this world, because they're not part of it.

The last thing about my outlook on life that's changed as the result of having Crohn's disease is learning how to define myself differently from how I described myself in the past. Most people define themselves by their occupation. Some still rattle off their astrological signs. And there are those who state their persona as the medical condition from which they suffer.

When people ask me what I do or who I am, I now describe myself by what I enjoy doing: writing, editing, singing, rescuing animals. I tell other patients who are struggling with this to ask themselves whether they would rather their obituary rambled on about a string of job titles or chronicled what great parents or talented volunteers they were.

The choice is pretty simple.