How I learned to love what once made me shudder.
By Tina Aswani Omprakash
Originally published by Everyday Health on 5/17/2019: https://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/my-health-story/why-my-ibd-scars-make-me-proud/
This year’s World IBD Day theme is “Making the Invisible Visible,” and I’ve been taking a long hard look at what that means to me. The reality is that living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has meant donning an invisibility cloak for most of my adult life.
But over the past 14 months, I’ve striven to make my invisible illness visible. From sharing my story widely on social media to using my platform to educate others on how IBD wreaks havoc on patients like me, I’ve come to realize that visibility is necessary for awareness and acceptance. Visibility is vital for improved care and better treatment for those who suffer from IBD and all its nuances, from ostomies to strictures to fistulae and fibroids.
In the midst of donning this proverbial invisibility cloak, we cover up and hide our scars: scars from flare-up after flare-up and surgery after surgery, scars from the emotional battles with our own minds and with society at large, scars from blaming ourselves for this disease and scars from the guilt of missing important milestones in the lives of our loved ones. Some of us talk about our scars. Many of us are ashamed of our scars. And all of us live with our scars. But why is there shame around them? Perhaps more importantly, how do we rise above these scars and overcome their hold on us?
Keep reading on Everyday Health: https://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/my-health-story/why-my-ibd-scars-make-me-proud/
