Grief in Disguise

The subject of grief is tricky because grief is different for everyone. At a young age I had to grieve the loss of my adopted brother Noah. He passed away while in the process of his adoption. A week before we were supposed to go and meet him for the first time, he became incredibly ill. His asthma was bad and Haiti didn’t have the tools to help him get better. My parents did everything they could to get him to America or get something to Haiti that would save his life. God had other plans and called him home shortly before he would’ve turned one year old. As an elementary schooler, I lost my baby brother. At the young age of 10 I had to grasp the concept of losing someone I 100% considered my brother and someone I also had never met. I was teased in school and bullied because of it. Why? Kids can be mean and I truly believe that “hurt people, hurt people”. Still doesn’t make it right but death doesn’t seem right either... anyway. Grief looked different at 10 then it does at 20 and I think for me it will always be changing because as you grow and change, so does how you handle and grasp things. 

At 21, I lost my colon. Now you might be confused as to why I bring this up in a post about grief but don’t worry, I’m getting there. My colon was in awful shape and did me way more harm than good. For years I was battling my own body and I tried so many things to take care of it but nothing worked long enough to make it a worthy medication to continue forward with. Ultimately my body refused the medications and fought right back against them. Things were rough for a long time but nothing was as bad as it was in the late summer of 2017. I was the healthiest I had been in regards to eating healthy, working out 4-6 times a week and losing weight. I had a goal, I pushed myself and was on the road to achieving those goals. I was doing good for my body and yet I became the sickest I had ever been. Things were so bad that they decided surgery was the only option. It’s funny because a surgeon comes in and tells you “this is the only way to relief” and no matter how much you don’t want someone cutting you open and removing a piece of your body, it’s the only option... you can’t just say “no I’m good, I’ll live in pain”. So you sign away your life and depending on the situation you only have so much time to prepare yourself for a life changing surgery. For me it was an emergency surgery meaning it wasn’t originally scheduled or planned and we weren’t 100% sure when the surgery would take place but I was in so much pain, I would’ve done it that same day. Oh and another thing... they “prep” you for surgery but can you ever be fully prepared for something so huge and drastic? I don’t think so. I mean I sure wasn’t. I did little to no research because of how ill I was. I spent my days hopped up on drugs, in bed and depressed. To be honest a lot of my time in the hospital is a big blur of pain and depression. There’s not much I’d like to relive anyway so it’s been said that it’s best I can’t connect all the bits and pieces. All I know is, it was bad. Once out of surgery the healing and recovery process began and man oh man was it ROUGH. Y’all I was not prepared for it and just thinking about it makes me an emotional wreck but I think talking about it is good in a way. So here I am. Recovering from a surgery I had almost no time to prepare for and most certainly wasn’t in the best shape to prepare for was the hardest thing I ever experienced. At first pain was pain and I couldn’t really differentiate the pain I was feeling before surgery to the pain I was feeling after surgery. I do however remember eventually getting a slight appetite back and being forced to get into a chair and not in the bed. That was tough. As time went on and I walked and sat up and smiled all for the first time again, I started to think maybe I can do this. Now let me be completely transparent in saying that this took months and months of work. I was still on a ton of medications and the steroids in particular added to the deep depression and anxiety. Again, being transparent here I will say that I was scared to be alone. Once home from the hospital I was still in pain and honestly having an ostomy bag and part of my insides stick out of my body made me hate my body. It got to the point where I was still praying for God to take my life away. I wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t ready to lose my colon. No one told me straight up how scary and heartbreaking this all was. My body wasn’t mine and honestly I didn’t want it. I hated taking a shower because it meant I would have to see my body in all it’s broken glory. Changing my clothes to find things that made me feel good was a daily struggle. Changing my ostomy bag brought me to tears almost every time because I felt like a hideous monster even though looking back now, that ostomy bag saved my life. 

I mourned the loss of my colon. Why? That’s a great question. Why would I mourn the loss of something that was very quickly ruining my quality of life? Why would I mourn the loss of a body part that was so inflamed my doctors had never seen anything like it? Why would I mourn the loss of something that over the years made getting out of bed close to impossible and going out with friends something that struck up fear in me? Why? It doesn’t make sense and I 100% understand that but if you have been where I am today and have gone through the struggles I have faced I think it would make a little more sense. I don’t understand people to fully get why I sometimes miss my colon but not having my colon makes me different. I’ve never been one who fully enjoyed what being different entails. Anxiety alone makes standing out from others a daily fight. My body is different. I cannot eat what others eat and that bothers me. I schedule my day around restroom breaks and that irks me. I lose sleep at night because of my missing colon and that exhausts me. I have scars on my stomach and some days I look at them with pride and others, it brings me to tears. My body works differently. I will admit that it works way better than it used to and the pain levels are below what they ever used to be but my body is different. I look at people and envy their lives. Not because I envy their cars or their skin. Not because they make more money than me or because they can do their makeup better than me. I envy them because they can sleep through the night and wake up well rested. I envy them because they can eat salad, oranges, and beans without causing their body pain and bleeding. I envy them because they can run without feeling like a scar in their stomach was burning. I envy them because they can spend hours and hours out of the house without having to hold it before they make it to the restroom. I envy those who can sleep on their left side and not cause their body to go completely out of control in pain and discomfort.

I envy health. I always have. Whether it be mental health or physical health. I have always only wanted to be completely healthy. The day I lost my colon, I lost a piece of me I work hard to heal. I lost a part of my body that I fought to get medication for. I lost something that I prayed to get better. I lost something that sent me in and out of hospitals. I lost something that I wanted so badly to get better. I lost something that I raised money to get a cure for. I fought for health. I was physically my healthiest when I was admitted to the hospital. I did my part. I truly believe I did. Yet here I am without a colon. A piece of me I will never get back. 

Yes I mourn something not exactly necessary to the human body. I mourn something that threatened my quality of life. I mourn something that cost my family way too much money. I mourn it everyday. Some days I mourn it with encouragement of the future and all that is to come from my new normal and some days I mourn it with heartbreak that I had something in me that even I couldn’t salvage. 

I don’t miss being ill but I do miss being hopeful of a cure for my brokenness. Surgery should never be the only way out. This shouldn’t be the way to a healthy life. There needs to be more awareness and more efforts to fight for something that helps alleviate people’s pain. Ulcerative colitis was stronger than me, I’ll admit that but we together are stronger than Ulcerative Colitis. Let me repeat that. WE are stronger than ulcerative colitis. Please continue to educate yourself. Donate if possible. Pray for a cure. Together we can take down ulcerative colitis. Together we can fight for a cure. 

To learn more about Ulcerative Colitis and how you can help fight for a cure, click the link below. 
https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/