Debut Of Crohn's Disease

How it started

No doubt we all know that little stomach pain coming from time to time, where we blame the food, the coke, alcohol, or 'eh, it will go away'.

In the summer of 2013, after I finished high-school, I started to have some small pains here and there, and I did the same as I described. The problem started after I've been 2 months with those pains and starting to worsen.

I've been from doctor to doctor, at different hospitals, all of them being specialists in gastroenterology. I've got used to the answers:

• Pain will be gone, just take this pill;
• It's usual for teenagers to some sort of stomach pains;
• He has nothing! The blood panel says it.
• It's stomach cancer.

Just a few months passed, with 3 doctors visited, and in November I almost could not recognise myself:

• I had lost weight from 85kg down to 70kg;
• My bowel movements had blown up, like 10-15 per day;
• It was hard for me to eat and even drink water because I would go afterwards and throw them back into toilet;
• Stopped my gym workouts as my energy and force was extremely low;
• Rarely went to college because of all the sympthoms above.

In December, as I dropped to 59kg, my parents decided that we should go to urgency through a recommendation. Only then I was finally correctly diagnosed by the doctor - which I'm very grateful to - with Crohn's disease.

But.. how?

As you can image, my lifestyle wasn't in place at all. The only good thing I was doing for my health was gym training.

I've recently read 'When the body says no', by Gabor Maté, where he explains that is very common for doctors not to ask patients with autoimmune diseases about their emotional life. By doing so, they could make other connections that would lead him to heal its traumas, the potential root cause of the disease.

For that, I would start with 3 emotional impacts that had hit me at that time:

• Going through my first breakup;
• Seeking acceptance and validation from other people I considered cool;
• The stress of getting into my first year of college.

All are common, although the first one is vastly discussed. As for the second one, it's a shady characteristic of us to admit we do that, ending up negating. This generates more frustration that we are doing something we don't want to.

We look for others to validate and accept us when we are not self-confident, self-accepted and self-connected.

Regarding social habits, I've almost 'checked' them all:

• I was drinking a lot of alcohol as it made me forget about mental pains;
• No doubt I was smoking since I wanted to be part of the 'cool guys';
• I was sleep deprived as I was sleeping 3-4 hours during the day.
• Played video games compulsively;

Even my health's foundation - nutrition - was unable to sustain my lifestyle, because I was only eating fried things, processed and ultra-processed foods, pastry, candies and was lacking water and vegetables.

Summing all these up, sounds fair, doesn't it?

There's always a good part

I could had just give up and accept that that was my fate, but what could I have learned from that approach?

Instead, I preferred to accept the position I'm in at that moment, and find ways to get myself together for the first time.

As I wrote in the previous letter, motivation hit me after I got used to the thought I'll die soon. Since then, I got more afraid of dying without trying everything I can to save myself.

In any negative experience, there's always a good part, even more valuable, we only need to learn how to see it

The immediate actions I notice I could take were:

• Get out of bed and move bit by bit, several times a day;
• Start to eat cleaner;
• Stop smoking - it was a though one which I couldn't do by the first shot;
• Get rid of the negative people I was hanging out with;
• Reduce the alcohol.

As you can observe, there was not even a trace of self-understanding, self-confidence, authenticity and other self related actions I saw I could take.

I've started this big journey bit by bit, without even realising, and constantly adding up new habits or actions that improved my life.

Until the next letter, I wish you success in everything you're up to!