One Year Since That Fateful Day

11-5-2013

In the abundance of things out there in this world that discriminate, there is one thing in particular that is never bias in whom it chooses to attack.  A deeply distressing experience, otherwise known as trauma.  Trauma doesn’t care about the color of your skin, your gender, or who you pray to at the end of the night.  Trauma blows in like an unwanted hurricane, and abolishes everything in its path.  Trauma follows you home, rearranges your life, and always leaves a scar (no matter how tough you are).

Trauma also brings the deep darkness that allows the stars to profoundly shine.  Although trauma chews you up and eats at your core, it always spits you back out.  It gives you the ability to overcome difficult ordeals with a tenacity you could have never imagined.  This time last year, trauma was a stagnant figure in my life and simply refused to go away.

On November 5^th, 2013, I had a blade sliced through three inches of my abdominal flesh to have a massive portion of my colon excised forever.  A colon that gave me nothing but trouble, and temporarily robbed me of my life.  I am amazed by how fast this year passed by, considering it was the most difficult year of my life.  Three years of chronic pain and suffering all culminating into the very thing I feared most in this world.  The thing I had been fearing since I researched that every 3 out of 4 people with Crohn’s Disease gets surgery at some point.  I was confident, I could be the exception.  However, after eight years of dodging surgery at every possible cost, I could no longer evade the inevitable.

After three years of speeding full force down a progressively steep slope, I fell to the bottom of the deepest and darkest hole.  With my large intestines perforated, and an abscess about to leak its contents through my bloodstream, death glared into my eyes and dared me to surrender.  My own body had betrayed me, and was a ticking time bomb waiting to implode at any given moment.  I will never forget the moment I was wheeled into the operation room.  Anxiety and fear consumed me at the realization that the future of my existence was now in my surgeon's hands. 

Unbearable agony emanated from every inch of my body in the weeks that followed.  I regretted going through with the surgery at all, wishing death would show mercy and set me free.  Even though I was the most depressed I have ever been in my life, something ignited inside of me to fight back.  I had endured way too much to let the wrath of this disease get the best of me now.  All I can say with certainty is that the human will to survive is like a fire that can never be extinguished.

Determination and hope coursed through my veins, as I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other.  I vigorously fought my way back, and intensely pushed forward into my future.  As I look back through pictures of that horrible time, the extent to how sick I really was hits me harder than a Mike Tyson punch.  I have made incredible strides since that fateful day, those of which I never even imagined possible so soon.  In this past year, I have accomplished every goal I set for myself, and then some.  It’s only a comeback, if you create something worthy of coming back to.

I have the confidence now to know that I can accomplish anything I set out to do.  I am more hungry and determined for success than ever before.   I will always face challenges from this disease in my life, but I will always face them with the same obstinacy and vigor I did to get me through this past year.  Despite all of the cliché quotes and sayings, life is a precious gift that often eludes us until it is too late.  I am determined to ensure my tragedy will be utilized to reap the greatest benefits this life has to offer.