Thursday, May 30, 2013

Post #104: Team Picky

And amber waves of.......inflammation? 
I have a confession: I used to be a self-righteous diet snob. 

I used to make fun (in my head) of the chia seed slurping, quinoa snorting, ancient grain loving, make-your-own-nut-milk types. The hipsters and the raw juice fanatics. The whippet thin ladies in lululemon yoga pants who populated the aisles of Whole Foods. The suit wearing professionals pouring over ingredient lists with laser like focus, paying $8.99 for a package of gluten-free brownie mix that will invariably look (and taste) like sewer sludge. 

I had more tolerance for the true die hard hippies, the kindly men and women who cruised the bulk item section of the local co-op, buying five pounds of organic dried black beans to cart home on their bikes (in the rain. whilst wearing Tevas and hiking socks). 

Of course, there were those with true food allergies, but in my cynical mind, the proliferation of gluten-free fake out foods in every local grocery store was due more to the whims of an upper middle class consumer base obsessed with following the latest diet trends. Gluten, in particular (and now to some extent soy, dairy, and refined sugars) seemed to be the cause of all of our health woes. It was the devil in grain form. 

My bullshit meter exploded. This is the new Atkins, I told myself. People have evolved to enjoy a varied diet, which includes such illicit foods as pasta (gasp!), bread (shock!) and muffins (horrors!!). I scoffed at the people who strove to eat like cavemen, or only ate hot dogs and bricks of cheddar (seriously, I know someone on Atkins who did this), or ate according to blood type. 

Before Crohn's, I used to pride myself on being a "good eater." This meant that I was flexible. Ethiopian food? Vietnamese? Japanese? Greek? Sure! I could find something to eat anywhere. I enjoyed trying new foods. I ordered off the menu without substitution. I could go to a dinner party and eat what was served without hesitation. I could overindulge one day and be fine the next. I wasn't afraid of food. 

I'm not a "good eater" anymore. 

What I didn't account for, in all of my supercilious, judgmental assumptions, was that for some of these people, diet was a last (or maybe for the smart ones, first) attempt at mediating illness. I looked at these shoppers and saw picky eaters, when in fact I might have been staring at sick ones. Like me. 

I resisted changing my diet since my diagnosis. I counted on the medicine and the doctors to make me feel better. In some ways, I am better, but in many ways I am not. As I said in my last post, I was waiting for the turnaround, so it didn't make sense to me to radically alter my lifestyle in the meantime. I ate what I could tolerate, justifying my diet with the oft repeated "diet just doesn't matter with Crohn's" refrain I kept hearing from all of the medical professionals around me. 

Lately, though, my thinking has changed. How can what I eat not matter? When my nurse, talking to me after the doctor had left the room, suggested an anti-inflammatory diet, I took it as a sign. It was time to try something new. 

All of this is to say that next week, I join team picky. 

I'm not going to name the diet I'll be trying, because I don't want to advocate any specific dietary restrictions, and I don't even know if it will yield any positive results in my case. I will say that I won't be eating dairy, wheat, or refined sugar for the foreseeable future. The diet I picked is one with a lot of clinical research around it, and I'm working with a dietitian to map it all out. 

I am of course afraid that this will make things worse, but I play to go about it in a very slow, measured way; I'm also curious to see what effect, if any, this has on my health. 

I figure if I can give the super scary injectable medicine a six month trial run, I can extend the same opportunity to a diet, no matter how restrictive. 

And to the people I was silently judging for buying  6 dollar bags of gluten free pretzels: I'm sorry. I was an asshole. If those pretzels made you feel better, I was in no position to judge your choices. You might see me wandering the aisles of Whole Foods in my yoga pants-please be kind. Also, save me some snacks. 

Monday, May 20, 2013

Post #103: Shield your eyes....

Because my life is SO GLAMOROUS you might need shades, y'all. I'm not southern, but I feel like I can still get away with that. 

Behold! Things that happened this week, with pictures!

Super expensive butt aspirin! 
This doesn't really need an explanation, does it? 


Costco, where the elite meet to eat (free samples)
You know what makes a super crowded Sunday afternoon Costco experience that much more enjoyable? STOMACH CRAMPS. 

I wish....
A list of things that gave me heartburn:

Juice
Toast
Eggs
Boneless, skinless chicken
Smoothies
Cheerios. Plain ass Cheerios. 


(hooray!)

This bathroom is swanky, no?
Depressing: when you spend so much time in the bathroom that you go through all of your reading materials (we're talking two periodicals and a stack of catalogs, people) and can't get up to get more. And no, I do not take my smart phone into the bathroom because EW. You put that thing up to your face. A thousand times no. 

UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH

Hearing my LEAST FAVORITE phrase from my doctor. Again. Sigh. 

Making it rain, etc. At the pharmacy. WHOOOOOOOOOOO. 
Also depressing: spending obscene amounts of money at the pharmacy; even the pharmacy tech was like, whoa. 


So, after such a glamorous week, where am I off to next? London? New York? Cannes? Oh right. 

Except without the mohair (??) tea cozy. Sexy.


                                                                                       Try not to be jealous.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Post #102: Great Expectations

Well, seeing as how you're already all gloved up.....
Hey, guess what I just had? My second colonoscopy of the year! Whooo. I seriously should enroll in some sort of "frequent flier" scoping program. Perhaps there is a punch card of some sort? A 10% off coupon for valued customers? A BOGO promotion? 

Everything went smoothly. I didn't talk to my doctor afterwards, but I did talk to the nurse who was in the room the whole time, and she said my AAC looked "ok." I read on the paperwork that he took some biopsies as well, which I knew because I had that delightful "kicked in the gut by a tiny, angry shetland pony" feeling in my gut. 

The day of the procedure was my Crohn's med injection day, and I read online that giving yourself the shot standing up was easier/less painful then doing it sittting down. Ha ha, THANKS A LOT INTERNET. I had a golf ball sized lump that is now a golf ball sized bruise, a constellation of green and yellow and purple dots staining my abdomen. My eye is drawn to it every time I step out of the shower. It looks about as violent as giving myself the shot sometimes feels. 

Sorry if this post feels scattered, but so does my thinking around this. I haven't blogged for a while, and it feels a little awkward. It's not like anything changed, in terms of my AAC; increasingly, I'm just getting sick of talking about it. About the food I can't eat, the weird procedures, the night sweats, and the joint pain (that's a new one)-how I feel like an 80 year old women when I come down the stairs in the morning, gripping the handrail and saying "ow. ow. ow." under my breath as my swollen ankles pop and creak in protest. 

Depending on the results of the colonoscopy, can I say that this medicine is working? Is it worth the side effects? And the most important question of all: 

Is this as good as it gets? 

I'm trying to wrap my head around it. I've spent so much time invested in the idea that I was going to return to a place of normalcy, where I felt healthy again. Where I felt good, and able, and strong. I'm not at that place; sure, I may be a few steps past where I was at my worst, but I didn't think this was the big "tah dah!" stage of this whole process. I'm not a shiny, perfect example of a successful "after;" maybe after a year and some change, I thought I would be. That probably wasn't a reasonable expectation in the first place, but it's what got me through. 

I guess I just don't know what I'm waiting for anymore. This might be as good as it gets. And if it is, how do I stop waiting around and start moving again? How do I progress when I feel like I'm still waiting to be healed? How do I shake the feeling that I should wait around until things are better? That is my inclination, but it maybe be time to reassess. 

All of this is floating in my mind, a perplexing stew of thoughts and hopes and feelings and fear. There's a little determination in the mix, a little hint of impatience. But mostly a dull confusion that makes everything hazy and difficult to discern. 

The recurring theme in this blog, and in my life, is a desire for clarity. I don't think colonoscopy #2, as delightful as it was, will give that to me. 

I just don't know how to wean myself off of expectation. I project my hopes onto every blood test and invasive procedure, looking for medical markers to guide me on my way, to help me make good choices, the right choices. Clear signs that say, definitively, YES! Stay on this medication or NO! Try a new one. 

I end up with a lot of maybes, and at this point, as you can probably tell, I'm just so freaking unsure of which way to turn.