Category: Crohn's

Today was a tragicomedy in two-and-a-half acts.
I think I’ve reached journeyman or maybe green-belt status in medical tests, because now I’m given far, far fewer specific directions about what I’m supposed to do and what’s going to happen. Such that “fast 12 hours” is the entire, terse explanation I’ll get and it’s left as an [...]

Yesterday my gastroenterologist (Dr. Gravitas, his blog-pseudonym) was sitting next to me “brainstorming,” as he called it, about why it was that I felt so vaguely (but convincingly) bad. We were in one of the GI examing rooms in the Portland Clinic, which I should mention (now as good a time as any) are some [...]

I’m a hairy person, in respect to my head. All of my life I have garnered expressions of shock or, yes, even jealousy about the thickness of my mane. Mostly it is good, but it does mean I can’t have short hair because I look exactly like that wedge-shaped Alice character from Dilbert:
Lately I have [...]

I went into my last Remicade infusion at St. Vincent Cancer Center–last Monday–with too much hubris. They hooked me up, the IV went well (save for a bit of “digging” for a wayward vein), and the goop went into my body in record speed. Start to finish in 2.5 hours.
I ate an unwise quantity of [...]

One of the ironic characteristics of Crohn’s Disease is that the sickness it causes me is quite likely partially because my immune system is too strong. I had never really stopped to think about this. I had always thought I got as sick as anyone else. Headaches, sometimes Migraine? Check! Stomach pain, tube grief, and [...]

One Year Later
Originally uploaded by lyzadanger

The one-year anniversary of my surgery and the status of my scars. There is one above my belly button and three on my abdomen. One is not visible in this photo. They are healing and fading quite nicely.

Every several weeks I spend a half a day or so in the hospital and it has come to the point where this doesn’t feel like a significant thing. It is a good exercise in a different state of consciousness.
Today is my day for 750cc of Remicade. Right now I’m tethered by my right forearm [...]

“The pains we inflict upon ourselves hurt most of all.” — Sophocles (from my journal, May 25, 2008)
“AAAGH! I just dug myself a deeper hole! [Referencing social ineptness. Next to this is drawn a circle, filled in with blue ink. An arrow points to the circle and is labelled "My Hole"]. (From my journal, May, [...]

“There, where one burns books, one in the end burns men.” — Heinrich Heine (noted in my journal, March, 2008)

Hubris
Belligerent self-confidence is unpalatable, especially when unfounded. And it ruins your bedside manner–you!, the doctor on call in lieu of Dr. Gravitas*, my reliable (if milquetoast) GI. You were a stroke of bad luck at the [...]

I spent the first half of February 2008 waiting to be disemboweled, which is a strange state of affairs. As such you might imagine I’d remember the time vividly, but I struggle to recall much beyond the thin, pink twilight walks from office to home, punctuated a bit more often than usual by a trip [...]