Faith Through the Journey

This week I had one of those wonderful life experiences again: a colonoscopy! For those of you who have been through this, the prep is an exquisite form of torture. I remember very well going through my first prep experience 25 years ago in the hospital, and I almost took the nurse’s head off when she prodded me to “finish it all”. The other complication of that first prep was that I was tethered to an IV pole, so every hurried trip to the bathroom also required me to drag the beloved pole with me. With all of the wonders of modern medicine, how is that no one can seem to come up with a better way to clean out the human digestive tract than drinking a gallon of antifreeze??!! It is merciful that the medical personnel put one to sleep before commencing the scope part of the exam, especially since  the night’s sleep before the exam was pretty well shot by being up with the prep. I always ask the people in the room to not hold anything I say under anesthesia against me. It was a little creepy when they were getting ready to inject the medication and they said it was Propophol–wasn’t that the drug that killed Michael Jackson? Over the years I’ve been given a number of different meds, and all I ever ask is that I be OUT and that I don’t wake up nauseous.

When I woke up, after the procedure was over, my doctor and my husband were both very happy. My husband has looked at enough pictures and reports to know what’s good and what’s bad, and he looked at the report before I woke up. He was thrilled, and when my doctor came in to talk to us I thought she might start dancing or cheering! She has done enough of these on me that didn’t go well, so I think she was almost more excited than we were that we FINALLY had a great report! There were no strictures, no visible evidence of active Crohn’s disease, and, of all things, she wanted me to start on a high fiber diet! I have NEVER been on anything but a low residue diet, so it’s like a whole new world opening up in terms of what I can now eat.

While we are extremely grateful for this respite from having our lives ruled by Crohn’s disease, we aren’t losing sight of the fact that, in my case, Crohn’s recurrence after remission has been at a rate of 100%. I’m now using a combination of oral medications and injections to hopefully prolong the remission. If the time comes that we are once again confronted with the challenge of active Crohn’s disease, we will trust God to give us His strength to be able to walk that road again. But for now, for this day anyway, we are celebrating the good news that we can enjoy life without the shadow of Crohn’s hanging over us. Is God still good, even if the Crohn’s comes back? Yes. Does He still love us? Yes. Will His grace be sufficient, no matter what the future holds? Yes. If there’s one thing we have learned, it is that God is good no matter what our circumstances may be, and He will equip us to go through whatever He allows into our lives. He always loves us and will always walk with us through every circumstance.