How My Body Betrayed Me

a true story about my digestive system collapsing and how it ruined the start of college

Watch the video version of this essay.

Warning: this will gross you out.

If you've got a weak stomach, stop reading.

What you're about to dive into is not a pretty picture. Trust me. There are more pleasant things to read.

I don't know who you are or what your tolerance is for this kind of thing, but I do feel responsible for letting you know in advance…

Seriously.

You've been warned.

1. First, the dog died.

She was a cinnamon chow chow, and she lived a good life. One day she woke up paralyzed, and we knew it was time. We had a specialist come over and inject her, and then we carried her body out to the trunk of the specialist's car in a thin shawl that sank with the weight of her corpse. I dropped my end of the shawl as we descended the porch and the whole package went down to the pavement, hard. The specialist said don't worry, nothing can hurt her now.

It wasn't long after that my grandmother passed away.

She was an antique collector and a fashion icon and had been on the decline for a while. She'd grappled with emphysema for years and OCD her whole life. One day she took a fall and her hip went out. She was bedridden. Eventually, pneumonia set in. It always starts with a fall and a broken hip. Tale as old as time.

We gave her the best care we could, but a month later we had to say goodbye. I don't remember crying. I delivered a great speech at her funeral but didn't cry. I didn't even own a suit at the time. I wore a bright white button-down shirt in a sea of dark garments and had nothing black to conceal it. Before, during, and after the service, I never cried.

Six months later, I was hospitalized.

The doctors were convinced I was on the brink of septic shock. At least one of them had never seen anything like it. Thankfully, this isn't a story about how I died.

But it is the story of how my body tried to kill me. How it attacked me from the inside out. How it turned me into a walking skeleton and ruined my first semester of college. It's a story of countless hours spent in a high school bathroom, of blood in the wrong places, of oddly-colored fluids flowing into and out of me at any one time.

It's a story of self improvement and self destruction.

And it gets so much worse.

2. I Should Probably Tell Someone About This.

Nine months earlier. I'm a senior in high school. Dog and Grandmother still alive.

Every day I have about three to four bowel movements. They come out fast and are mostly liquid. 'Unformed' is the clinical term. Everything spills out at once. Mass exodus. I can't help but say things like jesus christ as it's happening. Something is wrong. I say oh my god under my breath. Something is definitely wrong.

My inner tubing evacuates itself with the force of a food poisoning incident. But this is every day. You can't possibly have food poisoning every day. Siri, is it possible to have food poisoning without knowing it?

I'm an otherwise healthy eighteen year old who's not digesting his food. I'm rapidly losing weight. I weighed in at one thirty today. Down five pounds from last week. I was a chubby fifth grader who knew he was chubby and I never fully recovered from that so I don't clock the weight loss as a red flag. And besides, the skinnier I am, the more freedom I have to binge. So I carry on. I don't tell anyone. Why would I tell anyone? It's probably just my diet.

3. Self Improvement / Self Destruction.

There's a certain skill required to eat a dozen donuts at a time. You have to really want to get them down. Like anything, practice makes perfect. I do it so fast it's impossible for me to enjoy them. It's like there's a gun to my head. Imagine a masked man pressing the barrel into my temple as he says eat them all right now or it's your brains splattered on the bedroom wall.

It's helpful to remember: binging is a compensation response. So is working out.

Here's me holding a plank for seven and a half minutes at a time. Here's me wanting six pack abs so bad I'm doing this plank routine every morning at six AM on the spiky carpet floor of the basement. Here's three inch patches of dry, flaky elbow skin on both arms, scabbed over from the abrasions of said carpet.

Here I am staring into the mirror across from me, gritting my teeth through hot, sweating tears as I tense my abdominals. The tear/sweat cocktail drips down to the carpet where it mingles with a small schmear of blood. Looks like the scabs on my elbows are opening again. See: blood, sweat, tears. Ha.

Here's me spending upwards of thirty minutes a day squinting at my physique in the mirror. If I look a little puffy, or water fat, or whatever, here I am breaking down crying. Rage tears. Rage pushups. Rage binge.

Here I am alone in my room, eyes totally glazed over and staring at nothing, as I'm stuffing my face with __________.

Fill in the blank yourself. It doesn't matter anymore.

4. I've never seen anything like this before.

Welcome to the second stall of the third floor bathroom of my public high school. It's the middle of third period so we have the place to ourselves. My lower intestine is emptying itself. Everything spills out. Mass exodus. Jesus christ I say under my breath. This can't be normal. This is not normal.

I must be drinking too much coffee. I should stop drinking coffee altogether. Stop eating sugar altogether. I should stop vaping. As of today, I'm never vaping again.

I just need to get my lifestyle together. I need better habits. If I just ate better and worked out more, this wouldn't be happening to me.

Mom takes me to an endocrinologist. I tell her I'm worried I have low testosterone so we get it checked out. They stick a needle in me and fill up ten plastic bottles with my blood and then leave us alone in the room. My feet dangle over the side of the padded table thing like I'm a child.

Doc comes back and says my testosterone sure is low, but the more alarming thing is my A1C. It's way higher than it should be. Here's a number of other compounds I can't pronounce that are way too high or low, respectively. On paper, I appear to be an anemic ninety year old. I am not an anemic ninety year old.

Doc says he's never seen anything like this. Not a fun thing to hear from your endocrinologist. His prescription: eat whole foods, get good sleep, chill out with the vaping.

I have my blood taken at least four different times over the next three months. I apply to college. Blood test results come back. My compounds are still way off and Doc doesn't know why. Maybe I have a parasite. I'm accepted into college. My A1C is still through the roof. Probably because I'm still vaping and drinking Starbucks frappes. Surely that's the problem. My testosterone must be low.

One day after lunch, I spend all of PE crippled with intestinal pain I can't talk through. It's like I chomped into one of Grandma's snow globes and little chunks of glass and miniature snowman are now halfway through me. My theory: protein is digested in the stomach. The chicken breast must be giving me a belly ache. Maybe I should go vegan.

I'm starting to look real skinny in the mirror.

5. The ulcers are coming from inside the house.

It's summertime in the suburbs.

I make a vegan oatmeal bowl and eat it on the front porch where I dropped Chestnut's body. The oatmeal comes out black. It's a full cup of raw oats, mixed with a plant-based protein powder that looks like blended seaweed, a full scoop of spirulina that looks like blended seaweed, a quarter cup of flaxseeds and a quarter cup of chia seeds.

Here's a bowl of plant-based sludge. Here's over one hundred grams of insoluble fiber. Here's a digestive system on the brink of collapse. It turns out humans aren't supposed to eat a cumulative half cup of raw seeds in a single sitting. Like, no one. Not even the full blown vegans.

Those dealing with (still) undiagnosed inflammatory bowel disease should take special precautions. Especially those whose intestines are starting to swell from the inside.

The pain kicks in halfway through the sludge. It's bad. But I don't believe in wasting "food." Somehow I choke down the whole bowl of muddy, fibrous slop. I immediately excuse myself to the bathroom.

It's one of those moments where you say to yourself: this was a huge mistake and something big has to change right now, today. It feels like there's been a lot of those lately.

Over the last weeks of summer, my tract starts crying for help at random intervals, usually for about ten to twenty minutes at a time. Imagine swallowing a drawer of nine millimeter screws at your local Home Depot. Imagine them moving through your guts.

You know the poster with the little smiley faces at the doctor's office, the one where you're supposed to point to how you're feeling. The expressions range from totally tranquil to red alert emergency type pain. This falls into the latter end of that spectrum. Ten out of ten.

A day before I leave for college, I make a vegan smoothie bowl in the Vitamix. I can't finish it before my intestines throw in the towel. I tell Mom my belly hurts. I tell her it's been hurting for months. Since before we went to the endocrinologist. I tell her I've been having diarrhea since January. Since before Grandma died. I tell her yes I know I should have told you sooner but this is the situation and we might as well deal with it. We stay up late trying to diagnose me on Google.

I move into my dorm the next day with nothing but nitro cold brew and ulcers in my system. We still don't know about the ulcers.

6. I have bad news, and I have bad news.

It's the week before classes start.

I'm unable to eat a full meal without severe pain kicking in. Take a bite out of a glass bottle and feel the shards make their way through your digestive tract. Imagine that every time you try to eat. I weigh one hundred twenty two pounds. I record a video of my emaciated frame and am thrilled with how lean and lithe I look. I'm excited to lean bulk. I've finally earned the right to a caloric surplus.

Pain wakes me up every night at three in the morning. Ten out of ten on the pain scale. Red alert. I'm already laying on my belly so there's nothing I can do. I text Mom even though she's asleep.

That weekend, I get my first colonoscopy. I am eighteen years old. They make you drink about a gallon of this sickly sweet, salty grape-flavored solution that makes you sit on the toilet for three hours while your system clears out. Mass exodus. I'm familiar with the sensation at this point. You spew and spew until you're well and truly empty and it's just yellow fluid pouring out the back door. And then they make you re-dose and do the whole dance again.

You show up for the procedure and they put you under anesthesia and you conk out for a few hours while they feed a camera through the least photogenic part of your body. If you're ever uncomfortable putting yourself on video, just be grateful you only have to show your face.

You wake up from a dreamless sleep and they tell you the news.

You have Crohn's Disease.

An incurable autoimmune illness. Here's the deal. Your immune system attacks your digestive system by inflaming it as hard as it can, from tip to tail, for lack of a grosser explanation. Your biological defense system recognizes your own body as a foreign enemy and unleashes hell. We do not negotiate with terrorists.

Essentially: you are allergic to yourself.

Your intestines are lined end to end with ulcers. Ulcers are like the cold sores you get when you bite your lip, except they're in your guts. See: shards of glass. Nine millimeter screws. You have so many ulcers lining your intestines, they call it 'cobblestoning.' As in, your the inside of your guts look like a cobblestone road, but the cobblestones are little, white-hot intestinal cold sores that wake you up at night.

They prescribe you a lo-fi pain medication that doesn't work even one time, and Prednisone, an anti-inflammatory steroid known to make people sensitive to bouts of directionless rage. It does.

7. "Keep calm and carry on" said the captain of the sinking ship

I start college. I am an acting major.

The Monday after my colonoscopy I'm wearing socks in a wide open classroom with no desks and am making shapes with my body. I'm pretending to walk like an old man. I'm playing zip zap zop. My intestines are flaring again and I have to excuse myself because I think I might vomit. I don't have bowel movements anymore. I'm not eating anything.

When the pain kicks in, my mouth salivates in the way you do when you're about to vomit. I go to the bathroom to yak and nothing comes out but a turgid trail of spit that just hangs there limp until I pinch it off with my fingers and return to Voice & Movement. I weigh one hundred twenty pounds.

I call my parents and tell them it feels like my insides are swelling shut. I haven't had a bowel movement in many days. They put their foot down and say we're taking you to the emergency room. They pick me up from my dorm in the city and take me to the emergency room. The technicians check me in and give me a drink that's supposed to break through digestive backup. They don't understand that I'm not congested. My intestines are so inflamed, they've swollen shut. There's nowhere for the fluid to go. I drink it anyway and, moments later, vomit it back up. I tell them it's not because I can't stomach it. There's just nowhere for it to go. They give me a shot of morphine. It doesn't do anything. They give me another. Then one more. Then they leave.

Mom's in the room with me. The morphine makes my head spin. I don't know why, but in that exact moment, I tell her everything. Mass exodus.

I tell her I'm sorry I didn't feel sad when Grandma died. I tell her I didn't have a good relationship with her in her final years. I am crying. The tears come out all at once. I tell her I'm so sorry and I'm crying and Mom says it's OK, it's OK, and I think she's crying too. Hospital staff comes back into the room and says I'll be spending the night here and they wheel me away upstairs.

The only thing that puts me to sleep that night is the Prednisone.

8. Let this be the worst thing that happens all day.

When I wake up, they move me to a nicer room. I'm going to be here a while. They put me on NPO protocol which means I don't eat or drink anything. I get hydration and vital nourishment via IV tube. I think about how lean I'm going to be when I get out of here. The doctors think I might have an abscess or a fistula inside me.

They keep me trapped there for two weeks. I don't eat or drink. I watch food videos on my phone to get as close as I can to the real thing. I have to withdraw from the semester. The acting program affords only a certain number of days you can miss, and for an art school, they're pretty militant on that point. If I ever get out of here, I won't be going back to my dorm.

Time melts away as the world moves on without me. The doctors run tests to see if my gut does in fact have a hole in it. Every single one is inconclusive. Turns out it's really difficult to get a clear picture of the inside of someone's lower bowel. I do pushups on the linoleum floor in my hospital gown. I try Ambien for the first time. I flirt with the nurses. I watch YouTube. I catabolize.

Finally, near the end of my tenure, a team of specialists in white coats enters my chamber and shares what is to happen next. They stand in a straight line in front of my bed. Mom is with me on my side of the room.

I am to be released from their care. I will not eat anything by mouth for many months. They are going to put a plastic tube in my arm that will feed me intravenously each day. There is a whole process to this. I will carry on in this way until they know what to do next. They're still not one hundred percent on the abscess/fistula situation. I look at Mom and Mom looks at me and then the specialists. She says are you telling me this boy won't eat anything for possibly months? One of the specialists nods and says that's correct. The specialists leave the room. I cry real tears only after the door is shut.

The next day, they put the tube in my arm. They teach Mom how to disinfect it before and after each feeding. They talk us through how everything works. They show me the milky bag of intravenous nourishment. It's a cloudy off-white sludge. A bladder of low fat yogurt left out in the sun. That's what's going into my arm. I want to ask them how many calories is in each dose, but believe it or not, there's a Nutrition Facts label on the side of the bag so I can just see for myself.

9. Somehow things do get better… eventually.

I wear a little backpack that pumps the stuff into me with a mechanical "Vvv Vvv" sound. My best friend visits me every night after school and cracks jokes while Mom changes my bag and we still go out in his car and smoke weed in the woods and it isn't that bad. I'm allowed to eat italian ice because it's technically a "clear fluid" and that makes life worth living.

When they release me from the hospital, I walk out of the place on my own two feet. Dad drives me back home to the suburbs. The clouds are big, and have faces woven into them, and the faces look like hope.

Things have changed since I moved to college two weeks ago. The family got a new dog, a cinnamon chow chow. They named her Maggie. And my sister's moved into my old bedroom.

So I take Grandma's room.

This is where she lived before she was hospitalized. I sleep in her antique bed made of mahogany. The shelves are lined wall to wall with her possessions. It's impossible not to see them. Porcelain dolls, and little model children made of ceramics, and old china, tchotchkes and knick knacks with no purpose beyond existing on the shelf.

Next semester, I'm going to change my major to communications. I'm going to eat a lot and put on some muscle. I'm going to go vegan. A plant based diet helps to reduce inflammation. I'm going to get big and strong.

I'm on my phone in Grandma's old bedroom and looking things up on Google like: How to put on muscle with a vegan diet. List of vegan strength athletes. Vegan physique. Benefits of vegan diet for men. Does soymilk have estrogen in it. Does tofu have estrogen in it. Benefits of vegan diet for Crohn's disease. Signs of low testosterone in men. Does veganism cause low testosterone.

I drop to the floor for a set of pushups. Just outside the house, the new dog barks at a squirrel as it disappears into its place in the oak tree. My mechanical bag of nutrition goes "Vvv Vvv" and pumps milky fluid into my arm as one of Grandma's limited edition American Girl Dolls stares down at me from the top shelf with eyes that somehow always meet my gaze.