Thursday, December 19, 2013

Post #116: My holly jolly colon

Get in my face, you delicious little sugar grenades. 

Late night, 3 a.m. Awake and in pain. Sound familiar? This, my friends, is the worst kind of SSDD

I drenched the sheets with sweat. I remember, when I was trying to lay perfectly still so that I wouldn't move and make the pain WORSE, that I seemed to be sweating between my toes. Pain twisting my insides, shaking, forcing myself to take slow, measured breaths, failing and hyperventilating a little, and this is what pops into my head!?

Toe sweat: is that a thing? Do you sweat between each toe? Are there sweat glands down there? Is it weird to have sweaty toes? I mean, I always think of feet being sweaty, but not the toes, really. Is each little space between them like an individual armpit? Hmm. 

All weekend I baked (6 different kinds of cookies, in your face MARTHA), and then ate cookies and made myself sick. After a particularly sugar filled binge yesterday morning, I ate a veggie filled lunch to compensate. So, sugar or carrots? Cookies or zucchini? Peanut brittle or celery? What exactly set off my AAC? Hard to say. 

Not that it matters, whether it was the cookies or produce, when you're in bed at 3 a.m. sweating between your toes. 

But oh, that familiar holiday food paradox. I'm talking about the way the holidays (I'm looking at you Thanksgiving and the entire month of December) trick you into thinking that for some reason you DESERVE to eat real food during this specific time period, as if the unwritten (and unknown) laws of your tricky colon suddenly don't apply when the world is decked out in pine boughs and velvet red ribbon and holiday fucking cheer. 

It doesn't matter what your colon did yesterday, or the week before, because all of a sudden it's THE HOLIDAYS and you should let yourself enjoy that cookie, that candy, that giant roasted turkey leg (or whatever). Come on! You're around people who can eat whatever they want, and you soooooooooo want to be like them. The urge to "pass" as a normal eater is never so strong as during this particular season, so you let down your guard a little, relax your strict food rules, and indulge, as though hypnotized by listening to "White Christmas" one too many times. 

You swap Christmas cookies, and go to festive holiday lunches, and sample a few too many of the treats that you bake for other people. And then at 3 a.m., the pain comes, and the natural conclusion is that you DID THIS TO YOURSELF. This notion is further reinforced by the first thing people say when you tell them about your latest setback: "Well, was it something you ate?"

Nothing like a little internal (and external) food shaming to keep your sore colon company!

Here is what I know: my colon does this sometimes, and it doesn't matter what I eat. But it's hard not to draw the reasonable conclusion, especially during this season of unrestricted, mindless eating. I'm not immune to the lure of sprinkles, and I'm a sucker for stuffing. Guilty as charged! But this was not my fault. Fistfuls of Christmas cookies didn't help the situation, I'm sure, but the colon has a logic all its own. 

So now I'm sitting here typing and sipping my meals through a straw. I did have a pretty good run: I managed to swing Thanksgiving, and some of December, before my body got up and slapped me, reminding me that ultimately this is my reality, this 3 a.m. pain, not those few days of gleefully pretending my colon was the same as the other girl's. 

I can (and will!) enjoy the rest of the season, the first snowfall and the exchanging of presents and the visits from family. But now, as pain throbs in my side, I will do so with my mouth closed and my guard up. Depending one when the pain lessens, I might be eating soft foods till New Year's. Like it or not, that's just the reality of the situation, my situation, the one that involves an angry and unpredictable colon. I didn't ask for or cause this (repeat to myself a thousand times), and nothing takes the shine off holiday festivities like a bucketful of Prednisone, so I'll be taking it easy. 

And while I'm being kind to my body, I'll try to remember to be a little kinder to myself, and remember that this season can still be celebrated in a way that doesn't involve the massive consumption of butter, sugar, and eggs. There is, hopefully, seasonal happiness beyond the cookie jar. 

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Post #115: The princess and the (very many) peas

SO MUCH PEA. 
Hello neglected blog! I keep meaning to post, and then getting distracted, and then realizing it's been a month since I last posted. The reason I post at all, and the reason I'm going to try to post more frequently, is that it's helpful to work out what I'm feeling by writing about it-and it's been a long time since I've done that here. Things are a little backed up (cue constipation jokes!). So here goes....

I am now going to tell you a gross story to illustrate some gross realities in my life. 
**TMI warning**, and what not.

I once had a mole removed in the vicinity of my hipbone. It was a standard procedure, with ten little black stitches that look like the fur on a caterpillar's back. I did everything I was supposed to do, but when I went to get the stitches removed.....the wound had not closed. I remember the dermatologist saying, "huh"(add that to list of things you don't want to hear from your doctor). He put a butterfly bandage on, and some sort of sticky glue, and bandaged the whole thing up tightly. I was not to touch it, think about, or even glance in its direction for 72 hours, and then I was supposed to come back.

I'm pretty sure you can guess where this is going. That shit did not want to heal. 

He told me it would close in time, and to keep it dry and clean. I dutifully followed his directions, and it still would not close. It wasn't infected; it wasn't angry; it just wasn't closing. It was on a  part of the body that moves a lot, and even if you stay still most of the time, you're still going to have to get up and pee eventually.

It was during the summer, and I remember laying in the backyard with my pants pulled down on one side, sunning my sad wound in the hopes that the sun would make it shrivel up and close. I felt a malaise-there's no other word to describe it-a deep, unsettling unhappiness that pervaded and discolored everything. I was sick at the thought that I had to go about my daily life with THAT on my body. How could I enjoy the nice weather when THAT was still there? How could I pretend to be happy with THAT laying just beneath the surface of my clothes and a few strategic bandages?

That particular summer, that wound was my pea (see illustration above). Now, just so you don't think I'm being overly dramatic (never!), it wasn't like I had a sword wound on my side. I'm lucky it never got infected; and even though it left a gnarly scar (seriously, it's big), it did eventually close, but I will always remember that feeling-like a sickness of my very being-and how it trumped every other feeling, every other thought. It was like a stain I couldn't wash off. I think that was the first time I was able to articulate and understand how physical problems upset my emotional equilibrium to such an extent.

Side note: you know what finally fixed that problem? THE INTERNET. But that's an entirely different story. 

Now I find myself with a sore in a very Crohn's like place (TMI or not, that's all I'm saying). I'm doing the wound care thing again, and for the first few days I felt that same sickness, that visceral disgust, that soul-dampening weight of a painful, awkward, manifested bodily illness.

It's the pea beneath 100 mattresses, the sharp gravel stuck in your shoe, the mosquito bite that keeps you awake at night: the one niggling imperfection that prevents you from appreciating anything good or happy that is going on around you.

Maybe it's a character defect, but I've always been this way. Even with the Crohn's, there are things that just seem to automatically drag me down into sadness. These things tend to be the more outward/noticeable conditions; they happen, and suddenly I feel totally and completely defeated.

The sore is better; the wound on my hip did eventually close; but when it happens, when these injuries present themselves, I'm like a horse with blinders. In a world full of happiness and joy I plod forward, shoulders sloped, with a singular thought in my head: broken, broken, broken, broken.

And when I'm there, it's hard to see past that revulsion and sickness, to realize they are small (some might say, PEA LIKE) components of a much larger picture. Now, as I've done in the past, I get through it the only way I know how: by plodding forward, miserable and sad, waiting for the day I can venture out and feel normal once again.

This is all a roundabout way of explaining that I recently had some tests that showed things are going pretty well, in AAC land, and could not find an explanation for my current symptoms. To put it another way: the way things are now, the pain and discomfort and symptoms I experience, are my pea. They are still here after (or despite) treatment. They are there, providing me daily reminders that I have an occasionally (although it feels like mostly) dysfunctional digestive system, improved though it may be. 

I can't kick that particular piece of gravel out of my shoe; I can't shake the pea out from under all those mattresses. It is just what remains, and I don't want to live my life being disgusted and sickened and frustrated and held back by something I can't change. 

I've written before about how instead of New Year's resolutions I like to create New Year's mottos. So for 2014, I'm thinking it should be pea related. 

Something like: 

2014: EMBRACE THE PEA (hmmm, too R. Kelly-ish)

or: 2014: MAKE PEACE WITH THE PEA (better)

or: 2014: IT'S JUST A PEA GET OVER YOURSELF (why am I so mean?)

or: 2014: PEAS AND PERSPECTIVE (oooooh)

As with everything else in my life, it seems to be a work in progress. One thing is for certain: the pea is here, and I need to learn how to purposefully incorporate it into my life.