Today is the first day of fall, and I’ve been looking forward to the change of season for a while now. Summer is usually my favorite season: I love all of the opportunities to swim, hike, be outdoors for hours on end and wear dresses without feeling cold. But this summer—I guess the best I can say is we got through it OK. Overall, it was a rough go.

It started off badly and got worse, then somewhat better. By June, my daughter, E, was having acute stomach pains, and despite two rounds of tests that said she was negative for IBD, her inflammation marker was very high. The last two weeks of school were torture. I called the doctor and moved the colonoscopy/endoscopy up a week. E got through the tests like a trooper but the news wasn’t good: Widespread inflammation indicative of Crohn’s disease. She…