Eight years ago this week I was diagnosed with a chronic illness after decades of perfect health. For about a year I only had periodic instances of debilitating pain, but with time Crohn’s disease took over my life. I was constantly nauseous and in pain, I couldn’t eat and therefore had no energy. For allContinue reading >>
Before and After
When my illness was at its worst, a few months before surgery put my Crohn’s into remission, close to half of my hair fell out. This is common when your body goes through trauma (women often deal with this after childbirth), and I knew it at the time. I also had enough hair to coverContinue reading >>
It’s OK to be sick
When I got sick, it was public. I was late and out sick often, I couldn’t be as social as I had been before, I lost a lot of weight and later a lot of hair. I know some people criticized me for how often wrote about my illness, but I didn’t know any otherContinue reading >>
Ignatius and me in Barcelona: Companionship, reliance and faith
He was afraid that if he had a companion with him, he would lose some of that supreme trust in God, deflecting it onto his companion. – Pedro de Ribadeneira, writing of Ignatius’s travel from Manresa to Barcelona en route to the Holy Land, in The Life of Ignatius Loyola At a certain point inContinue reading >>
In between miracles
On the April day that I went to the emergency room for the first time, I returned home to learn that my cousin and godmother had died after a bewildering health emergency. It had only been a few years since we had lost two other family members far too young, and in those intervening yearsContinue reading >>
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