A month ago, I lay on an operating table knowing that a part of me was about to be removed. I had chosen sciences but I could never be a doctor myself.

I had known for a long time that this surgery was coming. I had been hospitalized three times in 7 months for bowel obstruction. Crohn's disease does not negotiate forever. Strictures tighten. Pain becomes structural. Medications buy time, but sometimes time runs out. Still, knowing something is necessary does not make it less frightening.

In the days before my ileocaecal resection, I was calm in the way people often are when they have no choice. Practical. Organised. Focused on logistics. I prepared all I could for the duties I held to keep on running smoothly. But underneath that composure was a quieter fear - not of the surgeons, not even of the anaesthetic - but of uncertainty and about my psychological strength in recovering.

Would I wake up the same person?
Would my body cooperate afterwards?
Would this finally give me relief - or mark the beginning of something worse?

Surgery for Crohn's is never "cosmetic." It is not optional. It is an admission that inflammation has reshaped your anatomy. That thought weighed heavily on me. A part of me grieved what my body could not manage on its own.

The morning of the operation, I remember feeling small waiting at the day care reception area with my husband there to support me. Hospitals in their way need to reduce you to essentials: a wristband, a file, a gown that ties awkwardly at the back. And yet, inside that smallness, there was also resilience. I had endured flares, medications, injections, fatigue. I would endure this too.

When I woke up after the laparoscopic procedure, the first sensation was not pain. It was awareness. A heaviness in my abdomen. A pulling around my belly button. A reminder that something inside me had changed.

The early days were harder than I expected with morphine, drains, drips, blood tests. Being a psychologist myself, I knew that I needed professional support. I asked for it and it came readily.

No one prepares you for the strange discomfort of internal stitches healing. The pulling when you sit up. The burning after bowel movements. The anxiety each time your body behaves differently. After bowel surgery, you are hyper-aware of every sensation. Every gurgle feels significant. Every twinge feels loaded with meaning.

I am also tapering steroids - a necessary step, but one that adds another layer of vulnerability. As the dose decreases, the safety net feels thinner. Fatigue creeps in. Emotions sharpen. You begin to wonder: is this healing, or is something returning?

That uncertainty became my greatest fear. Not pain. Not scars. But the fear of relapse. The fear that this major intervention would not be enough. There were moments - especially at night - when I would lie still and scan my body. Is the pulling worse? Is this adaptation, or inflammation? Living with Crohn's trains you to read your body like a diagnostic chart. After surgery, that vigilance intensifies.

And yet, slowly, something shifted. By the second week, I noticed my energy was slightly better. The fog began to lift. The redness around the drain site started to fade. The fear did not disappear, but it softened. Recovery, I have learned, is not dramatic. It is incremental. It is being able to stand up without bracing quite as much. It is realising you made it through yet another day. It is noticing that you are thinking about tomorrow - not just surviving the present.

There is also a psychological recovery that few talk about. When you live with a chronic illness, surgery can feel like both a failure and a rescue. A failure of medication. A rescue from obstruction. Holding those two truths at once is complicated. I had to allow myself to feel both relief and grief. Relief that the narrowed segment was gone. Grief that it had formed and become to exist in the first place. There was also a cognitive dissonance: How is it that to get better, I first need to feel worse?

Today I am still not "back to normal." That phrase feels unrealistic. I am healing. My abdomen still pulls. My body still tires easily. I am still tapering steroids carefully, listening for any sign that things might shift. But I am better. And perhaps more importantly, I am less afraid than I was.

Surgery forced me to confront something I often try to outmanoeuvre: vulnerability. We like to believe that discipline, research, and vigilance can control illness. Sometimes they can. Sometimes they cannot. At some point, you surrender to the expertise of others and to the remarkable, imperfect capacity of your own body to repair itself.

If there is one thing I would tell anyone facing similar surgery, it is this: the anticipation is often worse than the reality. Recovery is uncomfortable, yes. It is uncertain, yes. But the body is more capable than we give it credit for. More than that, we have a health system that we ought to be proud of.

With this operation, Crohn's is not cured. Unlike cancer, there is no cure for Crohns and it can only be controlled with medication for life.

A month ago, I was wheeled into theatre wondering who I would be when I woke up. Today, I am the same person - just stitched back together, inside and out, and perhaps a little braver for having faced it. Due credit goes to all the staff at Mater Dei who have helped me out in many ways. They are the real heroes.