Hi there. I'm an active duty military member and I was just diagnosed with Crohn's 2 weeks ago. There is a significant part of my small intestine that has been effected and I'm waiting on an MRI to see how far up it goes. If you know anything about dealing with military healthcare, that alone is a miracle and you can only imagine the nightmare I went through getting that far.
I was just yanked off deployment (can't say I'm sad about that part but still) and away from my unit and everything I know. Even my medical representative is different because my original went on deployment with my unit. I have no idea what I'm doing now. I'm not being discharged, but I'm medically disqualified from my job and now I think I'm riding a desk to the end of my tour. That's a whole bunch of feelings there.
Military insurance just denied my medication. I'm appealing (this is a SUPER BIG BUMMER because there's so much extra work for being active duty) but I have no idea how long that will take or if it will even work. I can't afford medication without insurance. I'm kind of freaking out about that but apparently it's normal for insurance to deny expensive medication like the biologics used to treat IBD??
On top of all of this, my mother in law is convinced I can cure it through diet alone and is very vocally against me taking medicine of any kind for this. My husband is doing his best to help me deal with her but he kind of agrees with her (he says diet is better than medicine but understands that I need medicine to reach a baseline). We've fought about it a lot recently.
Im not sure how to feel about everything. Everything is changing and happening all at once and it feels like I have no control over what's happening or anyone to help me. I haven't even had time to process my disease or grieve a life I can't have because I'm so focused on just surviving til the next event.
Any tips here? Words of advice? Veterans who understands? Every little bit helps, and I appreciate being able to lay this out here.