“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl
I smiled when the doctor told me I had a disease I would carry for the rest of my life.
He was calling with my biopsy results, and the word he used was “Crohn’s.” I had no idea what it meant. But after months of pain that no one could explain, hearing an actual name for it felt like someone had finally turned on a light in a dark room. I wasn’t scared. I was relieved.
To understand why, I have to go back to the beginning.
It started with a pain low on the right side of my abdomen. Appendicitis runs in my family, so that was my first thought. I kept telling the doctors it had to be my appendix. They kept telling me it wasn’t.
The first doctor looked at me and asked, “Are you under a lot of pressure?”
At that point in my life, a handful of things were going wrong at once, and I felt like I was getting hit from every angle. So I said yes, a lot. He nodded like that explained everything and suggested I relax, maybe take some time off and travel for a few months.
So I did. I traveled for three months. The pain didn’t go away. If anything, it got worse.
I went to a second doctor. Same answer. It’s stress. Exercise more, lower your workload, rest more. I did all of it. I still woke up in the middle of the night with a sharp pain in my lower abdomen that would pull me right out of sleep.
A friend recommended a third doctor. I had some hope walking in. Funny enough, he said the same thing. Stress.
By then, I had started to notice something. “It’s stress” is what you sometimes hear when nobody can figure out what’s actually wrong. Everyone has stress in their life, so the explanation always fits well enough to end the conversation. It isn’t said with bad intentions. It’s just the easiest place to land when the real answer isn’t obvious. But I was the one waking up at 3 a.m. in pain, and I knew this wasn’t in my head.
So this time, I pushed back. I told him, no, it’s not stress. Something is really wrong with me.
He paused, then said, “Okay. If that’s the case, let’s do a CT scan and take a deeper look.”
That one sentence changed everything.
The scan showed something going on in my lower intestine. He referred me to a GI specialist, who recommended a colonoscopy so they could take a biopsy and finally find out what was happening. I did the procedure. A few days later, the phone rang. That was the call where I heard the word “Crohn’s” for the first time and where, to my own surprise, I smiled.
The relief didn’t last long.
As it turned out, it wasn’t going to be that simple. Crohn’s is a chronic disease. In simple terms, my immune system attacks my own digestive tract when it doesn’t like something, which causes inflammation and pain when food passes through that part of the gut.
The specialist was direct with me. Because it’s chronic, he said, this is something you’ll be managing for the rest of your life. He told me to take it seriously because if I didn’t, there was a real chance of needing surgery to remove the damaged parts of my intestine. He prescribed medication and told me that if I wanted to feel better and keep things under control, I would have to change my lifestyle and my diet.
Here’s the tricky thing about Crohn’s: it’s different for almost everyone who has it, and a lot of it comes down to food. Certain things trigger it, but the triggers aren’t the same from person to person. Someone can be completely fine with alcohol but unable to tolerate something as ordinary as orange juice.
In my case, the troublemakers turned out to be alcohol, spicy food, orange juice, greasy fast food, and coffee. I didn’t figure that out overnight. It took about two years of paying attention, cutting things out, adding them back, and slowly learning what my body could and couldn’t handle. Coffee was by far the hardest to give up.
Around that time, I told a friend what I was going through. I expected sympathy. Instead, he looked at me and said, “Dude, you’re so lucky.”
I was stunned. How in the world was I lucky to have a chronic disease?
He explained what he meant. The way he saw it, this was going to force me to eat well, pay attention to my body, and take my health seriously in a way most people never do until it’s too late. In his words, I’d probably end up healthier than the rest of them precisely because I had no choice.
At the time, it didn’t land. I was too busy grieving over the coffee.
But it’s been about fifteen years now, and looking back, I understand exactly what he meant. I cut the foods that hurt me completely out of my life, not most of the time, but all of the time. I’ve gone a long stretch now without a flare-up. The discipline the disease forced on me didn’t stay in the kitchen either. It changed how I treat my body in general.
I’m not going to pretend a chronic illness is a gift, and I won’t make any promises about adding years to anyone’s life. That was my friend’s optimism, not a medical fact. But I will say this: the thing I was most afraid of ended up pushing me toward a healthier life than I would have built on my own.
A few things have stayed with me through all of it.
The first is to trust your body and keep advocating for yourself. If something feels wrong and you keep getting brushed off, don’t stop asking. I heard “it’s stress” three times before someone finally ran the test that found the truth. If I had accepted that answer, I would still be in pain, or worse. You know your own body better than anyone, and you’re allowed to keep pushing until someone listens.
The second is that a hard diagnosis can be a strange kind of turning point. Not because the illness itself is good, but because it can force the changes you’ve been putting off for years. It made me face habits I would have happily ignored forever.
And the third is that silver linings are often invisible while you’re standing in the storm. My friend saw mine before I could. It took me a decade and a half to catch up to him.
If you’re in the middle of your own version of this, waiting for an answer, feeling dismissed, or sitting with news you didn’t want, I won’t tell you it’s secretly wonderful. I’ll just tell you that there are some situations you can’t change, and that’s exactly when life turns the question back on you and asks who you’re willing to become. You might not like the assignment. But you may look back, the way I have, and realize it was the thing that changed you for the better.
About Arman Soltani
Arman Soltani is the VP of Design at PastWisdom.com, where he combines his love for technology, design, and self-growth to create thoughtful digital experiences. Explore more at PastWisdom.com
