Learning to Live in the Present Moment - From Crohn's Disease

I pushed the IV pole out of the way to get a better view of the surgeon.

"But, at this rate, by this time next year . . ." I started out.

He cut me off and taught me the most important lesson I've learned as a Crohn's patient.

"Don't think about next year," he said. "The biggest challenge you'll ever have with Crohn's is learning to live in the present moment."

Before I was finally diagnosed at age 31 - after 20 or more years of suffering - I was the ultimate planner. Not only were my taxes done on time, they were submitted at least a month early. I had goals written down for five years in the future and index cards of grocery lists.

Then came the diagnosis. Then the first surgery. Then four more.

I am still a planner and plotter who writes down goals. My brain likes to catalogue. What's different now is that I have learned to savor the good moments. Whereas a major thunderstorm right before a corporate picnic I had planned would have sent my blood pressure soaring at one point, now I mostly shrug my shoulders. This doesn't mean that I pay my bills late or don't arrive for work on time, however.

The second thing I learned is to ban the four-letter F word. It's spelled F-A-I-R.

If you rounded up 100 people at random and asked each one if everything in his or her life was fair, I doubt you'd get a single affirmative response. This is because what's a disaster to one person might well be just a minor inconvenience for another. Everybody has problems.

I found the four-letter word just too cumbersome to tote around. In a perfectly just world, none of us would suffer from Crohn's disease, gain 30 pounds on steroids or be repeatedly chopped up like a chicken to remove diseased tissue. But we don't live in a world that's perfectly anything.

Another significant change in my life is learning to live peacefully in a mini-world with medical personnel. When I'm in this world, my main residence might be the hospital. My "second home" could be inside a CT scanner or a bay in the emergency room.