Waiting for the Cure

I am in amazement.  Almost in shock, really.  I’m having mostly solid stools.  My blood test came back perfect.  I am at my heathy weight, above it even. I can eat salad, bread, chocolate, Thai food, pizza!  Unthinkable things.  I was on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for 7 years, so each bite of bread feels like a triumph.  And I’m still improving.  Ten little hookworms.  Sucking on me, as I type.  I cannot catch up to my wellness.  My mind is still waiting for the crash.

My emotions rise and fall.  Hope!  Despair.  I believe! I fear.  I trust nothing until its repetition drills the reality into my head, day after crushing day.  How many years of remission will it take for me to trust that I am well?  I’ve had Crohn’s for 21 years, and rare were the years of perfect health.  Even when I was doing well, there was always the drops of blood to fear, the endless pills to swallow,  that one thing I ate, the dreaded infection that requires an antibiotic.  Always reminding me I was not normal.  I had a chronic disease.  I was not well.

Now I swallow no pills.  I eat toast and tea for breakfast.  I don’t have to ready myself for a painful shot of Humira, which never worked.  I don’t have to slide enemas into a bleeding rectum every night.  No hospitals to go for Remicade infusions, and sit and watch all the cancer skeletons walk by.  No constant fear of luekemia.

I walk through the streets stunned.  Are worms the cure?  I always thought I’d pick up a newspaper, get a phone call;

“Cure for Crohn’s disease found!”  I would get tears in my eyes, at last sigh a relief.  My mom would call me and say my search is over, I could move on to better things.

Is this it?  A few worms and we are right?  How long will the effects last?  How long will they stay alive in me this time?  What killed them last year?  Will I be able to reinfect if I need to?  What if I have no money?  What if the company gets angry over something I’ve written and refuses to treat me any longer?  I have to figure out incubation! I must become independent.  If the company that sells the worms folds, what would we do?  Who would we get worms from then?

I run the beach at dawn.  I swim out in the water, where just a few years before I longed for suicide to end my pain.  Now I don’t have to kill myself!  I’ve finally found something that works.  So far…

I always thought that life would change.  The veil of doom would lift and all of us with Crohn’s would finally allow ourselves to hope.  The world would know that our suffering was over!  But no one knows.  People are only just learning about worms.  The studies will take time.  The doctors will slowly experiment.  I was one of the first, but I won’t be the last.  Enough of us will try this and succeed.

I may have found the cure for Crohn’s disease.  As long as the worms are alive.

No great fireworks burst before my eyes.  The sun rises like it did before.  The seals swim by me, unaware of my triumph.

I am merely well.