CASES: In Fleeting Health, Moments to Savor, by Loren Berlin, The New York Times, March 2, 2009

It was 13 months before I heard those three beautiful words “You’re in remission.” When I did, I was sitting in my gastroenterologist’s office, watching him review my chart, beaming like a school kid bringing home a report card full of A’s. He looked up, smiled and added, “Hopefully, you’ll stay there,” then returned to his thick file on my rowdy large intestine.

Hopefully? That’s the best he could say? Why wasn’t he tossing my chart in the air with glee? At the very least, why couldn’t he share my enthusiasm?

Because he’d seen my type before — the ulcerative colitis patient. He had witnessed hundreds of us drag ourselves into his office, dehydrated, bleeding internally and unable to eat, sometimes in need of hospitalization. He had prescribed to us pills and transfusions, saline solutions and steroids, and patiently restored our health, only to see us fall sick again a month, a year, a decade later.

Such is the signature of ulcerative colitis, a chronic disease of the colon with intermittent cycles of potentially debilitating illness and completely normal living.

He already knew what I am still trying to grasp, that I will become sick again. Eventually.

Meaning my current state of good health — and the absurdly average acts that accompany it — is a privilege. Like eating at a Mexican restaurant. When I was sick for those 13 months, I couldn’t eat chips, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes or beans. Now I can eat all of them, in one meal. I can sit through meetings at work without suddenly excusing myself to sprint to the bathroom. I can take road trips with my husband, and attend movies at the mall. I can make plans and keep them. These banal activities are now noticeable pleasures.

Which raises the fundamental question of expectations. As a patient with an incurable illness, should I expect to be well and be surprised when my colitis flares? Or should I expect to be sick and be surprised when I am well? My doctor would want me to expect, even demand, to be well — and that’s what I want, too. But I am afraid. Afraid to believe in something so ephemeral as remission, reluctant to trust this coquettish sweetness called normalcy. Read the rest of this article here.

Loren Berlin works at a nonprofit organization in Durham, N.C. She last wrote about her illness for Cases on Feb. 26, 2008.