Relapse

Just about 2 months ago, I was forced to take another medical leave from Nima, due to my Ulcerative Colitis. In the weeks preceding the start of my leave, I was hit with another severe flare up. Just like last year, I started bleeding internally, lost all my energy, couldn’t get out of bed for days, and felt absolutely terrible. It felt like the cruelest kind of deja vu.

The first emotion that I felt was denial. Denial that this was happening again, and denial that I needed to take severe intervention to get myself back on track. I remember talking on the phone to Shireen, my co-founder, about how I’d be back in the office in a week or two. At the time, I was literally lying in bed because I was so weak I couldn’t be anywhere else, and because I needed to be 5 feet from a bathroom or else I guaranteed would have shit myself. I’m realizing now that perhaps some of the traits that have made me a good founder (determination, drive, and endurance in the hardest of conditions), have also helped me delude myself about the real condition of my health.

As Shireen, my partner, Libby, and my mentors helped me work through that denial, my emotions quickly turned to anger and depression. I was angry at myself for ignoring the warning signs and letting myself get sick again. Frustrated that while my mind and heart want to move so quickly, my body kept holding me back. Disappointed in myself for letting my team down and leaving them yet again. And depressed — just plain sad, disheartened, and down — that here I was, almost exactly one year after the last time this happened, in the exact same situation again.

Since starting my medical leave two months ago, I’ve slowly been improving. But I’ve also been confronted with some harsh realities. A couple weeks ago I had a colonoscopy where the results were much more severe than I was expecting. I was also introduced to the term intestinal metaplasia. This is where your stomach cells start mutating to look like intestinal cells, and can be the step before pre-cancerous cells. Wonderful.

For the past week, I’ve been feeling anxious and irritable, and today I woke up overwhelmed with those feelings. I decided to sit down and meditate on those emotions, and try to sink deep into them to understand where they were coming from. And about 20 minutes in, it clicked. I’m scared. I’m really fucking scared. But now that I’ve identified that, I’m ok with it. I’m still scared, but I’ve identified my opponent (fear) and can see it clearly, which means it can’t sneak up on my any more.

Since the day that I started my medical leave, I’ve been wanting to write this post, but haven’t known how to. I’ve been wrestling with a strong feeling of disappointment in myself because of the fear of letting down those of you who are dealing with similar issues to me. Since writing a few blog posts last year, I’ve been blown away by the responses I receive. Thousands of people are still reading those blog posts every month, and I’ve had countless people reach out to me personally to talk about their issues, say that my story gave them hope, etc. So here I sat thinking, “How can I let all those people down? I’ve been a sign of hope. How am I going to write a new update and rip the rug out from under everyone?” Well here I am. Writing that post.

While I’ve known that I’m afraid of the repercussions of my health issues, this identification of fear seeping into and creating these other negative emotions in my life made me realize and remember how many of the rest of you are also fucking scared about the issues that you’re dealing with. And for some reason, society has told us that it’s faux pas to talk about our gut issues, or health issues in general. But we need to. There are so many people dealing with these issues, and we can either do it alone, or we can all be in it together. I choose to be in it together.

So let me give you a full update, since it’s been quite some time since I last wrote. For several months after I returned from the FMT treatment in Argentina, I felt on top of the world. I was in full remission, and felt better than I had in over 10 years. I was still dealing with some mild issues, some bloating, being a little gassy hear and there, etc., but I was orders of magnitudes better than I had been just 2 months before that. I kept up an incredibly healthy routine: I meditated every morning, and often would meditate a second time at the office, I would go to the gym to rock climb or do yoga 4–5 days a week, and I was eating an extremely healthy plant based diet free of any processed foods. While the rate of my progress wasn’t as fast as it was during my medical leave, I was still making progress and feeling very hopeful.

Then slowly that progress started to slow. I took on additional stress at work and in my personal life, and my healthy habits started to slip. After over 4 months of not missing a single day of meditation, I started to miss a few days here and there. The same started happening with my workout and yoga routine, and then with my diet. I was still feeling fine, but slowly, oh so slowly, I started regressing. I noticed small telltale warning signs, but I was great at ignoring them. Until it hit. Instantaneously. It was like I was slowly walking down the side of a hill until it all of a sudden turned into a cliff face and I was in free fall.

As always, from any experience, there are positive lessons one can learn. I learned that I HAVE to listen to my body. My body was clearly telling me that I was pushing myself too far, and I chose to ignore those warnings. I also learned that I need to maintain strictness with my routines that I know work. As I started feeling better, I also started becoming more complacent. I’m not going to do that again.

But through all of this, I have hope. I’ve conquered this once before, and I’ve read countless stories or talked to people who have healed themselves too. I still fully believe that a cure for Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s, Celiac Disease, or any other gut issue you are dealing with is fully possible. But there’s no silver bullet, and I’ve been reminded that healing takes time. This is a journey, not a destination. And I’m committing to enjoying, learning from, and appreciating that journey.

With this post, I’m also renaming my blog to Health Begins Now. If you’re dealing with issues, you have the power to take it into your hands. Not tomorrow, not the next week, but right now. And that’s what I’m doing too.

Much love.

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