i am a person.

The past few months have changed my definition of "summer vacation".

One of my favorite quotes is by Anton Chekhov, who said, "Any idiot can face a crisis; it's the day-to-day living that wears you out."

That's certainly proven itself to me.


This past May, I became particularly ill with what I thought was a Crohn's Disease flareup. I went to my doctor and was told that no, my health concerns were unrelated to having Crohn's; instead I'd contracted a bacteria called Clostridium difficile, or C.dif.

The only cool thing about C.dif is that it has a period in the middle of it like a rapper. Everything else about it sucks: This little bacteria was eating my internal organs, specifically my intestines.

I was immediately placed on a crazy dose of antibiotics, and I immediately felt better. Not only did the medicine make the C.dif inactive; it also gave me a reprieve from Crohn's Disease.


Since May I've been on these antibiotics.
Since May I've been able to live life as though I don't have Crohn's Disease.
Since May I've been on a true summer vacation.

I finished the antibiotics ten days ago, but yesterday afternoon, my body confirmed that the medicine was certainly out of my system: My Crohn's Disease came back with a vengeance.


As I sit here writing, in more pain than I remembered being possible, I can't help but think of a friend of mine.


Yesterday, I had lunch with this friend [who will remain nameless for her own privacy] who was diagnosed with colon cancer on July 20. She's in her thirties and has two young kids, lives a very active and healthy life, and is one of those people who warmly and unassumingly shows you her beautiful soul the moment you meet her.

She'll be having a foot of her colon removed tomorrow morning, a mere 15 days after her diagnosis.

As we discussed the nitty-gritty of the surgery over lunch (These are the lunchtime conversations I have with people. Appetizing, no? ...Anyone up for Panera next Monday?), she referenced having Multiple Sclerosis, likening her cancer to her MS in some ways.

It caught me off guard for a moment. Despite having known her just shy of three years, I'd completely forgotten that she had any sort of health problem. How is it that Crohn's Disease is so prominent in my mind, yet she handles MS with such grace that I'd entirely forgotten it was even a part of her body?

When I posed this question, her response was simple:
She doesn't view herself as a sick person.

No, instead, she views herself as a person. Yes, a person who happens to be sick, and a person who happens to have a cancerous tumor she's been unwittingly carrying around with her, but she views herself exactly as I've come to view her: simply as a person.

When I turned this perspective around to myself, I reluctantly realized that I've come to think of myself as a sick person. I'm a patient. A victim. A broken body in a broken world.

Why is this my identity? Why isn't my identity more along the lines of, a person who laughs? Who loves? Who lives life with abandon?


Why do I carry the burden of a broken body in my mind, when I only have to carry it in my body?





Since May, I've gotten a summer vacation from the day-to-day living that Chekhov insists (and rightly so) will wear you out.
That should give me a reenergized jumpstart on learning to view myself as what I am: a person.