Featuring articles on living with IBD.
When I was interviewed for the IBD Round Table, I made the comparison between having Crohn’s Disease and living as a ghost. It didn’t dawn on me just how accurate that description was until I began to think more about it.
Food. I enjoy it now, but I was tormented for years by the pain that eating or even smelling foods caused me. These fears meant that I’d often skip meals or stopped eating partway through a meal, and ultimately lead to a very weak, underweight and anemic me.
One lesson I’ve learned about IBD is that our symptoms can often be very misleading, and they sometimes don’t correlate with what’s actually going on in our gut. This can pose several problems as a patient and for the GI treating us.
Finding out that you’ve got Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis can be scary, especially if you’re new to the world of IBD, so it’s natural to scour the internet looking for solutions and treatments that fall outside of allopathic medicine. I was in that place once, but there are some things I wish I had known way sooner!
How do you cope when you’re stuck with a chronic illness or life-changing surgery? For me, it’s got to be humor; not just chuckling at random jokes, but deliberately making it a point to crack jokes or create memes about IBD or my ostomy. Why?
I had my first MRI today in order to find out why my butt has been hurting (and bleeding) over a year since my proctectomy. I’d be nice if perianal disease could quit being such a pain in the ass!
The experience was interesting, and if you have an IBD, you may at some point need an MRI too. Of course, no two experiences are the same, so keep that in mind while I explain how my day went.
Despite all the wonderfully positive stories you might see on the news or on blogs about IBD’ers who’ve overcome personal obstacles, it probably wasn’t always easy for them.
We’ve all heard about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), but have you heard of Posttraumatic Growth?
Managing a chronic illness can be daunting. Keeping track of medication, medical history, a symptom diary, a food log, prescription receipts or important articles can get out of control pretty fast, so if you were to ask me for a single solution to keep this chaos in order, I’d tell you it’s Evernote. I don’t want the following post to sound like an ad; I just want to share with you how I’ve used this software to manage my Crohn’s Disease and my ostomy. I really, REALLY love Evernote!
The death of Robin Williams in 2012 has sent shock waves through social media. If you had to name one actor who fits the word “funny” or “happy”, it would probably be him.