These Are The Golden Years

A year into my diagnosis, I was on the fragile ground between understanding what it meant to have Crohn’s and understanding why I had Crohn’s. I was developmentally growing out of being a child and though I knew logically that sometimes things happened for no reason, I still grappled with it emotionally. I tried to do what anyone does in a confusing situation - I tried to make sense of it all according to the way I saw the world. I look back at my bruised epiphany with pity almost, it was truly before hospitalizations and IVs and serious IBD issues, but I decided at 13 that I had been dealt my troubles young and that things would be so much better soon.

Well, yes and no. Today is my 19th birthday, and where am I? In a hospital bed, a repeat of my 16th and 17th birthdays. I lost the specialness I attached to birthdays when I was a little girl a long time ago, that anticipation that everything is brighter and happier on your birthday, when you are the princess at the party and the world is yours. Because, why can you only feel that way on your birthday? Birthdays are just another day, we gain a year, but there aren’t more hours in the day or more rainbows in the sky. I try my best to make everyday the best and the happiest, so birthday or not, it’s time to make the best of things.

Like birthdays, hospital roomies come and go. Sometimes you get the good ones, sometimes you get the duds. But right now, I’ve got a pretty good one on the other side of the curtain, we’ll call her ‘Merry.’ Merry knows when I have to go, I have to go and asks if I need the bathroom before she goes. She is pleasant and tries to make the best of things. Merry is probably about 60 or so, and she informed me that the only thing golden about the golden years is the pee.

Things are not always great in life. Things are not always great battling IBD. I have had more accidents in the past 24 hours and ruined more underwear than I care to admit and I’ve had the lovely experience of using a commode. But everyday is a day closer to surgery, a day closer to recovery, a day closer to feeling better.

Why wait to enjoy the golden years when they’re happening right now?

Jennie