Has there been a silver lining to your colitis?

Hey everyone!

Firstly I just want to thank everyone on this website for their posts. I was diagnosed a little over a year and a half ago and had trouble dealing with the condition for quite some time, but the threads on this forum have really helped me get through some of the bad times.

When I first became sick I'd just begun my final year of university; I was forced to drop out and defer the year. For quite a while I was pretty down about the whole situation. Suddenly going from enjoying life with my friends, to being bedridden in a hospital for several months with the knowledge that I'll be taking medication for the rest of my life. It was difficult for me. The prospect of losing my large intestine especially scared me. Looking back on it I know that I even became depressed at certain points.

But after a while I started thinking differently. I became slightly obsessed with the notion that while all of my friends were advancing in life, finishing college and moving on etc. I was a year down, I was behind everyone else. I decided that I had to be better, to work harder, all in order to compensate for the time I'd lost to my disease. As such, once I returned to complete my degree I was a hugely different person. I had much more determination and confidence; my work ethic had improved significantly.

I set my sights on receiving a 1.1 (and I was far from being a 1.1 student! haha). It became my personal goal. It was a way of proving to myself that I will not let UC dictate my life. All of this has allowed me to finish my course with a first class honours and the highest grades in my year.

I know wholeheartedly that my accomplisments would not have been possible had I not become sick. My UC has helped me change into a person with much more drive and confidence. I'm no longer afraid to reach for what I want.

What I want to know is, have any one of you have noticed positive changes in yourselves since your initial diagnosis? Has your UC become an unexpected source of determination? What has been YOUR silver lining?

:)

Wow, that's awesome guys!

Blue badger, I got UC during my last semester of college, while I had spent the previous year and a half trying to recover from an eating disorder that took away my body and my life. It's been a huge radical change for me and I never ever ever thought the things that have happened to me would ever happen. But they did. UC was the most surprising. I now don't doubt that bad, unexpected things can happen to me. But I think it has made me a stronger person.

My eating disorder recovery process made me want to become excellent at whatever I wanted to do, and I wanted to work hard. I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life. I'm a pre-med student, and I have a good grasp on biology and chemistry, but I had no drive to become a doctor. It was mostly about the paycheck. But spending so much time around doctors and worrying about my health, I REALLY didn't want it to become my profession to do so. I wanted to stop worrying about my health and just live.

UC came and devastated me emotionally and mentally. But through it, I've realized that it's not the end of the world and that I can still carry on. I decided now that I wanted to be an immunologist, because the immune system is so amazing and deadly and mysterious as of now. I want to be part of a team that can make life easier for all people with autoimmune diseases. I want to discover knowledge that no human has ever discovered before. I want my life's work to lead toward major revelations in the immune system and disease that could hopefully pave the way for cures.

Through UC I have found my life's calling and I feel that I no longer want to do things just for myself. I want to get healthy and become strong, sure, but I want to do that so I can accomplish my real goal of becoming an immunologist and working with people with AI diseases and doing research. I don't just want to have my own practice and see patients and not keep up with advances in medicine. I want to be on the front lines, part of teams that are working tirelessly to figure out how we can beat autoimmunity.

So that is what I feel UC has given me, in addition to a diseased colon, haha.

I have learned, everything happens for a reason! Even UC!

Not to be a downer, but Im with Judy on this one. UC hasnt brought one single good thing to me and has messed up my life more than I could have ever imagined. Im not depressed by any stretch of the imagination, just tired and frustrated

Gosh, no.

No wait there's one. I'm more happy to accept death because anything is better than living with an ileostomy and Crohn's disease for the next 40-50 years of life. If I got diagnosed with, say, cancer tomorrow, I would refuse all treatment apart from painkillers.

So yeah, sorry for being negative. I've found my positive after all. Go me.

My wife and I have become much closer. We've always been close, but having UC has brought me such an awareness to just how much she does and sacrifices for me and my family. It's definitely helped stop taking so much for granted.

It still sucks, though...

UC helped me to empathize with my wife while she was expecting.

Before UC I never would have understood the weight change, loosing weight due to flaring and gaining weight due to prednisone.
Not being able to sleep through the night without using the bathroom multiple times.
Very frequent trips to the bathroom whenever we were out.
Hormones raging causing drastic emotional swings.
Eating everything that wasn't nailed down.
Sometimes just feeling so tired and weary.

While my wife was going through her pregnancy I was able to be right there for her, because I understood what so many of these things were like. We grew very close during this time and even closer as she delivered our daughter.

Kinda funny to think that UC made me understand what a pregnant woman goes through to some extent.

If anything I've beome more unempathetic since getting Crohn's.

I literally have no tolerance within me for people who act like they are dying because of a cold or a 24-hour stomach bug. All I can think of is I felt have felt like death night after night after night for so many years, while the other person will be back to normal in a couple of days - but meanwhile that doesn't stop them from milking the sympathy for all it's worth. Once again, I suffered alone in my feeling like death night after night. I was never in remission, so there was never any respite: I was sometimes "better" and "worse", but always ill to some degree.

Personally, I just want to drop kick anyone who tries to paint a "positive" picture of this wretched, debilitating disease. Why not post this thread on Facebook, so the general public can read it and take IBD even less seriously than they already do? Medical professionals too, come to that, since most of them don't have the first clue about IBD either. It's only UC/Crohn's, it's hardly ****ing awful is it?

Post Edited (NiceCupOfTea) : 9/15/2014 9:55:21 AM (GMT-6)

everything happens for a reason......makes my ass flutter with intense disbelief.

I'm not a fatalist, so there's nothing positive about it or anything else I have to deal with.


I hate threads like this and all the "positivity" that's generated by a newbie. Lets close this now because my fingers are primed for this one.

q

malaika said...
I was diagnosed in my first year of university, and am trying to complete the course on time. So many positives, gosh where do I start. Much more patient and understanding, more knowledgeable about my body, distracts from my depression, better relationship with my parents...

I feel people look at me differently. People expect those with chronic illnesses to somehow me immensely strong, like how everyone suddenly has ultimate respect for people who have cancer. But the truth is there's nothing strong about us, no more so than the average person at any rate. You just do the best with what you're given, but I love the respect having UC gets you.

What you said about not being any stronger than the average person really hit home. When I was in the hospital for months, the nurses and doctors would tell me I'm so strong for fighting this and I would think, I'm not strong at all; I just don't have a choice aha. Really, what can we do? We have UC, we just have to deal with it. It's not going to go away (yea we can go into remission but it's always on the back of my mind that I have UC so it's very much a part of who I am now). As I said earlier, this is part of our lives now whether we like it or not and if someone else ended up being diagnosed with this disease, they would have to deal just as we're all doing. I feel guilty when people tell me I'm strong or if they cut me some slack just because I have UC. We all have problems in our lives. I have a health issue, other people have financial issues, marital issues etc. I feel like everyone is strong because we're all dealing with such stress whether or not it's health related. Granted UC is a chronic disease but we can always hope for remission. I'm going to stop here because I'm rambling now. Have a wonderful day.

I feel guilty when people tell me I'm strong or if they cut me some slack just because I have UC.

I wanna meet with these people so they can cut me some slack. I won't be feeling any guilt over it. Bring on the sympathy, it's about ****ing time I had some!

I just read through a lot of the comments and it seems as though this post offended a lot of people. This disease 100% sucks. I also don't believe in the everything happens for a reason crap. However, I do believe in making lemonade out of lemons. I was a teenager when I was diagnosed and I'm 21 now. When I was diagnosed I thought my life was over. As a young person who has yet to start her own life, independent of her parents, it was hard for me to come to terms with this diagnosis. My health has not permitted me to leave the nest as many of my friends have. My health has caused me to be very much dependent on my parents. Sometimes I think to myself, will I be able to find a significant other? Will I be able to find a job (forget a job, will I even be able to finish university?)? Will I ever move out? Will I be able to have a comfortable life? Will I be able to take care of myself? Will I be able to have kids? Do I even want kids knowing that they might get UC?

If posts like this one didn't exist, if I didn't look at the small positives from time to time (yes, compared to how crapty UC is, these + are small but nonetheless they are +s), I wouldn't be here right now. I would have killed myself (yes, I have contemplated it at several occasions when I am horribly sick in hospital). I was in an awful place and I still do get quite down from time to time.

Personally, I REALLY enjoyed this post. I NEED to reflect on the good because if I don't, I'd become an anxious mess.

Again, I know this post offended a lot of people but I felt the need to defend the OP and state how I felt. I hope you can understand how I felt and perhaps how the OP felt as well when posting this. I don't think he/she meant any harm.

NiceCupOfTea said...
I feel guilty when people tell me I'm strong or if they cut me some slack just because I have UC.

I wanna meet with these people so they can cut me some slack. I won't be feeling any guilt over it. Bring on the sympathy, it's about ****ing time I had some!

Aww, shucks. I have been fortunate in the sense that my university has given me long extensions on essays and for completing my exams. My family and friends treat me like I'm glass. They're very careful what they say around me and they don't let me pick up heavy bags and what not. They think I could break at any moment (which is nice at times but then the guilt sinks in 'cause I wonder, am I really that fragile? We have UC but I mean we can still walk around and do things you know!). Seems like you've had it rough. I'm sorry to hear that. I think everyone feels bad for me because I'm still quite young. I'm sure when I'm older, all of this sympathy will fade lol. Hope you get some luck in the empathy dependent like I've had over the years. It's a hard disease and it's nice when people try to help even if they don't completely understand what we're going through.

Post Edited (Baggravation) : 9/15/2014 11:38:12 AM (GMT-6)