A Debilitating Gut Disease Saved My Life

But first, it destroyed me.

This is a short story about a long battle with ulcerative colitis, a disease that’s currently classified as both an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and an autoimmune disease.

May I offer an idea of just how long my battle has been going on?: I saw the first streaks of blood in the toilet bowl at age eleven. I am now twenty-four.

But this isn’t a piece for self-pity, nor should you feel sorry for me. Truth is, though ulcerative colitis destroyed me in the beginning, this debilitating gut disease actually saved my life.

My Diagnoses: An Early Glance Into Fragility as a Life Form

In childhood and into later adolescence, we subscribe to the idea that we’re somewhat indestructible. “That can’t happen to me. Maybe that can happen to them, but it won’t ever happen to me.” That kind of thing.

Our sense of invincibility seems to be an almost evolutionary attribute, peculiar though not abnormal. We’re young. We’re fresh. We’re keen on staying alive.

I learned early that this indestructibility is painfully untrue. How?

I discovered blood in my stool, had numerous stool samples, had so much blood drawn that I left the lab pale as a sheet, and was told I had “ulcerative colitis,” a “life-long condition,” all in the same month.

It happened to me. I was diagnosed along with the hundreds of thousands in North America alone. I had ulcerative colitis at age eleven, a disease that brought me through mental and physical hell until it forced me to create my own heaven.

First, Colitis Destroyed Me

I tried many drugs and all to little avail. There were the antibiotics, the anti-inflammatories, the steroids, and the immunosuppressors. Some worked on-and-off, others made me vomit and made my face swell with acne.

Through middle and high school, I spent countless hours with the toilet wondering how much more pale I could turn before withering away in the bathroom stalls of Fountain Valley High.

The disease ruined my chance of securing a place in the high school baseball team. I had a good arm, a good bat, quick legs… But my body was plagued with anaemia. Every ground ball felt like a sprint, every jog to the fence a marathon.

One day, after visiting the toilet eight times in the same hour, my parents broke down and brought me to the ER. They said I was pale enough to frighten a ghost, “So imagine how scared we are!”

I’ll never forget the words of my ER nurse. He was fixing me up with an IV and fluids and said, “My wife has ulcerative colitis. It was really bad when she was your age, but it barely bothers her now in her twenties.”

My weak heart fluttered with hope.

Then, Colitis Saved My Life

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” -Rumi

This idea that ulcerative colitis saved my life (which it actually did) begins with the common idea that our challenges, when faced boldly, become our greatest catalysts for growth.

So, here’s what happened to me: Through a series of awakenings brought on by books and the stories of other ulcerative colitis warriors, I grew into a holistic healing aficionado. I researched widely. I learned about Ayurveda, fasting, and the importance of specific nutrients in the restoration of intestinal mucosa lining.

I became healthier than I otherwise would have without colitis!

Yoga gave me vitality, meditation gave me calmness, Earth’s healing foods gave me gratitude and nourishment. The disease gave me a chance to learn and care about healing, to cry on the days that I needed crying, and to laugh in joy at each new sign of optimal health.

In time, my consistent self-reliance halted the bleeding. I discovered hidden aspects of myself that gave me the capacity to carry more love, gratitude, and understanding in my being.

I’m entirely confident that without my ulcerative colitis (which, by the way, still gives me symptoms from time-to-time), I wouldn’t be as headstrong in the face of adversity. I may have not even discovered a few passions of mine that currently send me sprawling out of bed each morning in an exciting passion.

Words on Resilience Through Adversity

There’s an entire religion based around boldly facing adversity. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s called Buddhism.

The First Noble Truth in Buddhism is dukkha. In short, it means “suffering.” How, in a religion entrenched in peaceful meditations and enlightening imagery, one might ask, can it's very first truth be suffering?

When Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha himself, recognized that suffering makes up the fabric of existence (at least in part), he began to teach his followers how to overcome it. He taught the Second, Third, and Fourth Noble Truths.

Ultimately, these Truths teach us to live happily in a world that contains more material greed, corruption, and illness than we’d like it to. They teach us that self-mastery is the true passage to the kingdom of heaven.

“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.” — Leonardo da Vinci

Nowadays, when the bleeding returns (because oh, it sometimes returns!), I reestablish my healing practices, rub my navel-area, and say, “Thanks, old friend. I am who I am because of you. Boundless.”