And so, on the cusp of my teenage years, I was ushered into a new reality

My hands trembled as I dialed my friend Mirel’s number. Mirel and I had been close friends since childhood, and all the years I had keeping part of my life a secret from her. Now, after 20 years, I had decided it was time for a disclosure.

Although I knew this was the right thing to do and had practiced my little speech dozens of times, I was still terrified. How would Mirel react? Would she be hurt? Betrayed? Angry? Would she pity me? Would she think there’s something seriously wrong with me?

“Hello, Mirel?” I said, my heart pounding, my voice shaky. “It’s Batya. There- there’s something I need to tell you.”

***

Around the time of my bas mitzvah, I began experiencing some odd but mild digestive symptoms. Suspecting a parasitic infection, my doctor first referred me to an infectious disease specialist, who later recommended that I see a gastroenterologist. After undergoing a colonoscopy, I was diagnosed with colitis, a chronic inflammation of the colon.

Although my symptoms then were hardly disturbing to my life, the gastroenterologist prescribed a mild, long-term medication for me. This, he said, would keep the inflammation under control and prevent acute attacks, which could seriously interfere with my quality of life.

And so, on the cusp of my teenage years, I was ushered into a new reality, one in which I was officially struggling from a chronic illness.

I had never heard of colitis before, and I certainly didn’t know anyone with the disease. My parents felt that it was better to keep my condition private, and they never even told my siblings about my diagnosis. They did not explicitly caution me not to tell my friends about it, but I understood that colitis wasn’t something to be discussed when not absolutely necessary. Besides, the symptoms can be embarrassing to explain. And I did not want to be pitied or thought of as a nebach.

For most of my teenage years, I experienced no serious symptoms, as the medication worked well. I did have some flare-ups, during which I suffered from the symptoms of upset stomach that are typical of colitis, but with time we realized that these flare-ups were being caused by C. diff infections. (C. diff – short for Clostridium difficile – is a bacterial infection in the gut that causes stomach pain, severe diarrhea, weight loss, and blood in the stool.) Once we knew what was causing the flare-ups, the infections were treated with antibiotics, and the symptoms would subside.

When I got married, at the age of 20, I was completely symptom-free, and when I told Yitzchak, my chassan, about my condition before we got engaged – stressing that it was not affecting my life at all – his reaction was a pareve, “Oh, okay.”

It was after the birth of my first child that I suffered my first severe colitis flare-up. It started with me contracting C. diff multiple times in a short period, and these infections completely sapped me of my strength.