How Chronic Boils Taught Me To Live Guilt-Free (Part 2)

In case you missed it, check out Part 1 of this series!

My college days were filled with interrupted sleep patterns, meal choices that lacked proper nutrition, and an intense load of stress that was unshakeable. This mighty cocktail of environmental factors signaled to my body to once again begin attacking itself and like clockwork, I awoke one morning to a golf ball-sized boil under my armpit.

This time, the boils were more advanced and sinus tracts had formed under my arm making reaching my arms to the sky impossible due to extreme pain. My days were spent walking 30 minutes between classes and saying silent prayers in my head asking that I could just make it through the next hour. Once back to my dorm, I was tasked with washing clothes that were soiled with pus and blood, while also caring for the wounds as best I could. Many days I removed my clothes to find that the top layer of my skin had been rubbed off due to the physical burden of walking the length of the campus.

Staying silent was counterproductive

It was during this time, that I first realized that feelings of guilt and remaining silent would be a counterproductive strategy in fighting this war. I told my mom about the boils I had been experiencing and we quickly made an appointment to identify the cause of the menacing lumps that commanded my life. This appointment was the first time that my disease was given a name. At 21 years old, I learned that my chronic boils were called Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) and that I would likely be living with this disease for the rest of my life.

The compelling revelation that came after receiving my diagnosis is that a part of me also held guilt for living in silence about my experience for so long. In time, I learned that finally revealing my secret battle was an awakening that allowed me to gain a fundamental understanding of what my body was fighting. Then, it happened again. At the intersection of acknowledging guilt and moving towards acceptance, a brewing internal battle led me to consider the unknown. Receiving my diagnosis forced me into an eruption of emotions that caused me to mourn my period of remission and my life prior to knowing that I lived with HS. I experienced denial by believing my boils would go away in due time and that they would not be life partners in every sense of the word.

An ongoing battle

My days shifted between writing papers and lengthy hours of research to trying to pinpoint the initial cause of the boils during my youth. Was it something I ate? Did I have bad genes that led to imbalanced hormones which in turn caused my boils? I began to internalize my guilt and to see HS as a disease that had been the spawn of my own wrongdoings. And rather, I now realize that the impetus of this guilt stemmed from the underlying conviction that my HS was the result of an irrational belief in something that I think I did. This remains an ongoing battle even as I use my voice to help bring awareness to this explosive disease.

My struggles with guilt and my desire to live guilt-free as I manage my HS have taught me many things about who am I as a person and what I wish others understood about my disease. Further, it has taught me to no longer view HS as my enemy, but alternatively as a battle partner that waved the red flag to alert me to an imbalance in my body.

Check out Part 3 of this series!