Post #28: Crohn's is a GREEDY HIPPO

This guy obviously lives in his parent's basement, and maybe does bad things to cats.

Today was an ok day; better in the morning than in the evening, as is usually the case. I seem to have a new pattern: evacuation day, followed by a rest day. On evacuation days (this makes me think of an entire day spend doing fire drills, or stop/drop/rolling on the driveway) I am way more tired, like the act of creating normal poo completely drains all of my body's energy. I don't think this is a good sign, but at least there is something normal going on in colon town? Who knows.

Tonight, though, I'm feeling sick. My stomach hurts and has been doing some acrobatics after I eat. I'm nauseous and I think I may have a tiny fever. I can't seem to concentrate on any one thing-I feel like I've watched everything good on TV (horrors), reading seems like work, and I don't really want to learn about feelings in O the Oprah magazine. I should do laundry and pay bills and clean the kitchen, but I'm procrastinating here instead.

I thought the name of this blog, Angry Angry Colon, was a pretty clear allusion to the game above, but maybe I should explain. In my house, growing up, we never really had "fun" games or "fun" cereal or "fun" processed food. Sure, there was Monopoly, but there was no Mousetrap. There was NEVER Nintendo, and all of the cereals were high in fiber. My dad used to eat this one cereal that truly looked like bark, and we used to call it his "rabbit food." This is not to suggest that I had some Dickensian poorhouse style childhood (please sir, more high fiber gruel, sir!), but that my parents wanted everything to be educational, or at least not frivolous. If there is one word I would never use to describe my parents, it would be frivolous.

Naturally, "dumb" games and fake cheese snack products (Cheetos! because in nature, dairy products are NEON) were irresistible to me, and I used to love the game Hungry Hungry Hippos because it was quick, pointless, loud, and completely lacking in educational value. There's really no strategy involved-whoever has the greatest hand/eye coordination wins. Inevitably, one of the hippos would break from being vigorously pounded, and there were more white gumballs for the other hippos. It was the kind of game that was SUPER EXCITING for about 3 minutes.

I named this blog AAC because it kind of sounded like the game, and because the other alternative was more crass: before I was diagnosed, when I was undergoing all of the crazy testing and having symptoms and feeling like crap, my sister used to say I had MAD, or Mad Asshole Disease. It's kind of an all purpose diagnosis. I just didn't want the word asshole in the title of the blog, even though I talk a lot about it IN the blog. Asshole asshole asshole.

But AAC is really more applicable, because if you think about it, the ravening hippos are like the different parts of my life fighting for the limited amount of resources (energy, really) I have available to devote to them. One hippo is Crohn's, one is my social life, one is my personal life, and one is my work life. Right now, the kid playing the Crohn's hippo (stay with me here) has the most skills: that little bastard is hogging all the balls (ha). He's fast.

Hopefully there will be a time when the other hippos get a few more balls (ha) sent their way. When things balance out and every hippo has a fair shot at the prize. Unfortunately, right now, it feels like the other three hippos are muzzled.

While you ponder what board game best represents your life, I am going to go put an icepack on my face and try not to throw up.