I was a young, active and healthy 21-year-old man. I never expected I could get something like Crohn's disease. I was traning two hours a day, five days a week, so I kept thinking that stuff like this "only happens to others".

But in autumn 1997, I learned that everyone can suffer from Crohn's disease, and it's not necessarily hereditary. I learned about it the hard way. I was going to the bathroom up to 15 times a day, and there was blood in my stools. This lasted for weeks. I went from 189 lbs to 135 lbs. After multiple visits to the hospital, they found out that most of my colon was affected by the disease.

Back then I was really stressed, because I had moved to France with my parents two years ago, and I had left all my friends behind. Having trouble to accept my new life could be why I got sick. Not only was I depressed and stressed out, I also had to deal with this disease.

That's when I learned about the big cramps and stomach pains that hurt so much you can't move nor talk. I would try to curl up to make the pain go away, but I knew I had no control over it. I was always looking for restrooms when I went out in public places, and I didn't dare go far from my home or the places I knew well.

Taking cortisone for about a year did help me a little. And because I'm lucky, I had a healthy immune system before getting sick. But because it was now fighting against me, I had to deal with the fact that not all drugs work forever, and that from now on I'd have to change drugs every two years as well as deal with all the side effects.

After a few years of taking drugs, and even a year where my treatment cost over $60 000, I got another diagnosis: Liver Sclerosing Cholangitis. It's an autoimmune disease that affects biliary tracts. I probably got sick because of all the drugs I was taking, and I was probably predisposed to the condition.

In six years, I stayed at the hospital twice and had multiple small attacks. In the mid-2000s, I didn't have a lot of visible or annoying symptoms and I only went to the bathroom five to seven times a day. But even with all the changes that were made to my medication, I never was in remission.

In January 2015, my gastroenterologist (who's great, by the way) told me they found stage 1 and 2 dysplasia in my colon. This led to a more serious discussion aboutboth undergoing surgery before the disease became cancer and getting a permanent ostomy pouch.

After a really weird and rough summer where I had broken ribs, pneumonia, and multiple bronchitis, I finally underwent surgery in October 2015. They removed my entire colon, my rectum and the end of my small intestine.

And in January 2016, just before my surgery, I learned that I had colon cancer. I had no treatments for my remission, I just took something to stabilize my Cholangitis.

And that's how I became more resilient to adversity. I also want to share my contagious positivity and the way to distance ourselves from things we can't control.

Nicolas

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