All posts tagged: Ulcerative Colitis

Back from the Dead

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It’s been a really, really long time. I know it. The lapse wasn’t intentional; there have been a few pretty big things that have happened fairly recently that contributed to my nonexistence in the past six months. Let’s see…after a couple of months of contemplation, I decided to accept a promotion at work, which moved me from my three day per week role into a full-time Marketing Manager position, which I was happy about. It took a good bit of time for me to decide if the move was right based on the needs (demands) of my body, but I figured it was worth a shot, particularly because it has come with some pretty incredible health benefits. My annual deductible has now gone from $10,000 per year (which I have met the last three years by summertime) to $100. For the year. It’s insane. Almost too good to be true. I’ve been full time now for a month, and though my body is still playing catch up and reminding me that I can’t ignore its …

Vitamin & Mineral Deficiencies

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I’m back (finally) with an overdue post on vitamin and mineral deficiencies that are possible with IBD; I meant to get this written up sooner, but the Big, Bad Wolf visited us here in Texas last week and tried to blow our house down. Well, more like he tried to pummel it into the ground. April can be a bizarre month here, and this year was no exception. Last weekend, my husband and I were sitting out on the back patio one night, reading and enjoying a fire. All of the sudden, the TV in the living room sounded it’s Emergency Warning siren (which I have long ago learned is NEVER a test here) and the bulletin said that there was a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, with a storm moving through a town about 10 miles southwest of us. I looked toward the sky, noticing a very faint flicker of lightening in the distance, and told my husband that we should probably head inside. I headed in, taking both of our dogs with me, and was …

The Power of Food

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Food is a powerful thing for me. I’m not sure if I’m different from others in that respect, or if it tends to go hand in hand with having IBD for such a long time. Let me clarify here, I’m not talking about being a “foodie” (a word which I happen to loathe for reasons unknown to even myself). I’m talking about an intense relationship, one similar to that with a lover, a family member, or religion. I experience things through food. Places, events, cultures – even emotions. I would venture to guess that this intensity goes way back to the time frame about a year before I was finally diagnosed; I would have been about 20 years old and was beginning to restrict my diet more and more to try and alleviate the unbearable symptoms I was having at the time. First raw vegetables were cut out, then fruit, followed by dairy. Cooked vegetables didn’t work either, so those were nixed, as were beans and most carbohydrates, including plain white pasta. After about three …

Birthday Obstruction & Trying Out a New Hospital

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I had the weekend planned out for myself. As I finished work on Thursday, I was looking forward to the following day, which was to be the day before my birthday. I had purposely scheduled several treatments that day so I would be feeling my best and completely relaxed for the weekend, and to celebrate my 35th birthday on Saturday. Friday was supposed to start with a morning workout, followed by a massage, then a pedicure and finally a cut and color to round out the day. I had been looking forward to it for weeks. But it was not to be. I got home from work that Thursday evening and walked the dogs, enjoying the beautiful evening. My husband was traveling for work in San Antonio and wasn’t due back until the following afternoon, so I didn’t have to worry about cooking dinner. I thought I’d get in a strength training session at the gym that evening, but just before I was planning to go around 8pm, I began to feel some cramping in …

Latest IF Update & Reason for My Absence

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Sorry about the long delay; it’s been a really busy few weeks and I was stuck in the hospital again for another obstruction, which I’ll post about in a couple of days.  New hospital, better experience, in short.  Anyhow, finally getting around to loading the post I wrote a week ago.  — It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, but I figured it was time for an update on IF, as I had indicated I would be trying to do periodically. Just after that last post I was in to visit my chiropractor, and was telling him about my experiment and my hopes that it would reduce my inflammation. He cautioned me on continuing with the fasting as I had been doing (fasting for 16 hours each day and eating my meals within an 8 hour window) because for women in particular, it can cause hormonal and metabolism issues. We discussed what I was trying to get out of it, and I told him a few things I had observed during the week I had …

Chronic Disease From a Physician’s Perspective

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***Please note that this is not a post I have written, but rather an article on a Crohn’s Facebook page I follow.  I thought it was a great read and wanted to share, but for some reason the link was bad.  –Michelle A LETTER TO PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC DISEASE July 14, 2010 by Rob Lamberts Dear Patients: You have it very hard, much harder than most people understand. Having sat for 16 years listening to the stories, seeing the tiredness in your eyes, hearing you try to describe the indescribable, I have come to understand that I too can’t understand what your lives are like. How do you answer the question, “how do you feel?” when you’ve forgotten what “normal” feels like? How do you deal with all of the people who think you are exaggerating your pain, your emotions, your fatigue? How do you decide when to believe them or when to trust your own body? How do you cope with living a life that won’t let you forget about your frailty, your limits, …

Intermittent Fasting and Inflammation

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Admittedly, I’ve been hearing about the concept of Intermittent Fasting (IF) for a couple of years now and gave it no thought, as I love food way too much to voluntarily accept any kind of a fast, not to mention that the concept basically flies in the face of everything we’ve been conditioned to accept as gospel in the field of diet and nutrition.  Who hasn’t been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and that skipping meals can slow your metabolism?  Up until recently, I have been a follower of the “eat every few hours” mindset, to avoid blood sugar dropping and keeping metabolism up.  Additionally, I have found that since all my surgeries, I can’t consume as much food as I used to in one sitting, and that smaller, more frequent meals were easier on my system. If you’ve read any of my posts in the last few months, you know that my Crohn’s Disease has certainly been beating the hell out of me, what with frequent obstructions, ER …

The Soundtrack of Life – and Surgery

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Most moments in life have a soundtrack, if you think about it.  From iconic movie moments like Judd Nelson raising his fist in the air as the sound of “Don’t You Forget About Me” plays while the credits begin to roll in The Breakfast Club to Matthew Broderick lip synching “Twist and Shout” in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, music recalls a specific time, place or moment for many of us, good or bad. Music has been used in medicinal arenas going back thousands of years, when ancient Greeks identified Apollo as the God of both Healing and Music.  One of its more recent proponents, Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane, supported the use of music in the operating room, as he felt it helped “to calm and distract the patient from the horror of the situation”.  And he should know.  This man operated on himself not once, not twice, but three times, in order to better understand the experience of surgery from the perspective of the patient.  In 1919, he performed a self-amputation of one of his …

Do No Harm

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Another week, another hospitalization.  It had been a somewhat bumpy week after my discharge from the hospital mid-month, and after struggling with what felt like a partial obstruction this past Monday night, I woke severely nauseous on Tuesday morning, and was in the car driving myself back to the ER by 10am that morning while my husband was at work.  It says something that I felt comfortable enough to do this, as a hospital is supposed to be a place of respite and recovery.  Vomiting twice on the 15 minute trip over, I shuffled back into the ER, grateful that I would soon be relieved of my horrible abdominal pain and nausea by the staff there.  So as not to worry my husband, I waited until I was hooked up to IV fluids and had received some anti-nausea meds and happy juice before I called him to let him know I was back in and doing just marvelous.  Everything is marvelous on morphine.  I told him I was fine on my own for a while …

Latest Hospital Stay, My Thoughts on Hospitalists, and Why I Am a Pain in the Ass Patient

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So I had another post all ready to go up, but then I was hospitalized again last Monday night due to another bowel obstruction and a few things came up during that visit that I thought were a bit more important for the time being.  I can’t really say that this hospitalization came out of the blue, as I unfortunately missed my weekly dose of Humira at the very end of January because my husband and I were stuck in Boston for five extra days due to the blizzard that struck.  We had flown out there for the annual memorial service for my father-in-law, and at the time we left, no storm had been predicted for that weekend.  With my pills, I normally bring a few extra days worth in case of emergency, as I did this time, but traveling with injectable medications that need to be refrigerated at all times is a major pain in the ass.  Specialized kits tend to only keep the medication cold for a limited amount of time, and airlines …