The Choice Is Yours
Dread Disease or Inconvenient Diet?

By Erin

Recently my husband came up with a catchy phrase that pretty well sums up the choice we all have: “Dread disease or inconvenient diet?”

It is so true! When you're diagnosed with a disease as complicated, limiting and painful as a digestive disease, it’s tempting to feel like you’ve been labeled with it. Today, though, when I mention to new acquaintances that I’m on a diet to treat Crohn’s Disease it’s kind of strange to say that I have Crohn’s Disease and to see their reaction...because I really don’t have Crohn’s disease anymore! What I do have, though, is an inconvenient diet. 

What don’t I have that people associate with Crohn’s? Constant pain, repeated surgeries, strong drugs with bad side effects, always being on the lookout for a restroom, ill health, skinniness – or weight gain from drugs, complications from surgeries and drugs, and the list could go on!

Now that I’ve decided to trade Crohn’s for an inconvenient diet, there are still some limiting aspects to my life...Yes, it’s not easy at times. I have to think about what I’m going to eat before I go somewhere, make regular menu plans and shopping trips, and learn to substitute cravings for non-SCD food with legal recipes.

Is the trade-off worth it? Definitely. Robust health, energy for everything I want to do, no surgeries, no medication, not to mention the sweet little boys I thought I’d never be healthy enough to have!

I have come to accept the fact that when the doctor uttered the words “You have Crohn’s Disease” in September of 2001, my life changed. Life won’t be as easy as it was before I was diagnosed, but thankfully I have a much easier alternative than all of the pain and heartache that come with a diagnosis of a digestive disease. I’d much rather have an inconvenient diet than a dread disease!

Article from January/February I Want To THRIVE Magazine.