Post #118: Colon fear

ooooooh, symbolism

Oops, there goes another month between posts. To be fair, I've had two colds in the last two months, but an excess of mucus does not impede my ability to write. That would be laziness (or forgetfulness, or both).

Tonight I am thinking a lot about fear; more specifically, colon fear. I've dealt with my fair share of anxiety; I know how the body feels when it panics. I know what rational thoughts to tell myself to calm down; I understand that just because something feels scary, it is not necessarily so. Repeated exposure to anxiety producing situations have allowed me to (somewhat) separate the feelings from the reality. It took me years of, for lack of a better word, desensitization to be able to attain this perspective. I've had an anxious brain my whole life; I've had an anxious colon my whole life; but I've only had an ANGRY colon for a few years. I used to think that fear was fear was fear, but lately I'm realizing that colon fear is different. I'm not desensitized to it yet. You would think that after a year or two's worth of daily cramps and pains and other symptoms I would stop mentally packing my hospital bag every time I spend an agonizing hour on the toilet; but (confession time!) I still sleep with a phone next to my bed and a sports bra and sweatshirt by the nightstand, should I need to get dressed in a hurry in the middle of the night. Colon fear is still very real for me.

Now that I've pretty much concluded that my new "normal" isn't very normal at all, I've been putting out feelers into the real world, trying to figure out what I want to do next and how I can balance the unpredictability of my colon with the needs and demands of the rest of the world (friends, employers, etc.). I've been thinking about what I want to do, and what I can do, and I've come to realize that my colon fear has been clouding and confusing my conclusions.

I heard from an old friend today, who has been as understanding as possible about my AAC and the limitations it places on my life. Hearing her voice on my voice mail made me smile and think of the hijinks that would ensue if we lived in the same city. But we don't. I rarely see her, and that sucks. There's a reunion coming up, and a lot of my friends will be there, and part of me would love to go, but then colon fear rears its ugly head and my mind is inundated with the unknowns of travel, the lack of control over food and bathrooms and transportation, the sick people on the airplane, being away from my doctor and a hospital system I'm familiar with.....the list goes on and on. In any given week I have a bad day or two. How does that look when I'm thousands of miles from home?

The reality is that people with Crohn's don't cloister themselves into hermetically sealed living pods (I wish) away from all of the unknowns of the world, from flu-stricken seatmates to closed bathrooms to problem foods (what if all they served at reunion was lettuce!? ahhhhh). I've been trying to stay in the proverbial pod, and it feels safe, but really it's a prison of my own creation (see illustration above). Part of me wants to break free-to live life with reckless, germ infested abandon-but the colon fear wraps itself around my brain, whispering consoling thoughts about missing life's events and doling out a never ending supply of hand sanitizer.

Someday, my hope is that colon fear will just become like any other fear, something to be considered and put in its place. For now, though, it seems too large to conquer. The catastrophes it promises still seem possible to me. Pre-diagnosis, I was always feeling like I was waiting for the next bad thing to happen, for the next shoe to drop. At this point, I've been hit in the head by any number of falling footwear, and I can't shake the fear that they will keep falling and falling and falling.

And it's that thought, that fear, that specific colon fear that will keep me grounded and away from some of my very favorite people in the world. When it's all typed out, plain on the page, it really does seem like a lot to give up.

Post #117: I could medal in this kind of running (or at least place)

Different kind of running.....
Confidential to the lady in the grey spandex-you might want to invest in some different pants because I CAN SEE YOUR REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS geeze. 

Hello again blog! Welcome to 2014! Happy New Year to everyone who reads this blog and their colons/various digestive apparatuses. 

I could go in a lot of different directions in this post; how it's my two year diagnosis anniversary; how it's been a full year on my scary injectible medicine; how various colon attacks ruined both Thanksgiving AND my birthday dinner. 

However, this is a blog post about how people don't know shit about Crohn's (see what I did there? eh? eh?). 

This week I volunteered to help cook a meal for an area non-profit, and I ran into a family friend who I hadn't seen in a decade or so. She and her family were a definite fixture of my childhood; her daughter and I got into all kinds of mischief at various holiday dinners, and amused each other while the adults were being boring by sneaking away to the basement and pretending we knew how to play pool (I still don't). 

I was more than happy to see her, and we shared cell phone pics of our family members while dressed in ugly borrowed aprons, surrounded by huge vats of boiling water. Then came the inevitable question: what have you been up to? 

I kind of came to the decision that I would not lie about my current situation with people close to me, and since this woman had known me since birth I didn't feel the need to rattle off the jobs/hobbies/volunteer work I was into two years ago, pre-Crohn's. I told her I had been diagnosed with Crohn's and I wasn't working that much. 

Family friend (FF): Crohn's? What's that? 
Me: Oh, it's a disease of the digestive system. (blank stare) An inflammatory bowel disease? 
FF: Oooooooh ok. So, you get the runs a lot? 

Let's pause. 

OH HOW I HATE THAT PHRASE. Having "the runs" sounds kind of comical; I picture a comedian with their knees fixed together, kind of crab walking heroically toward the bathroom. Subtext: they probably won't make it, and that's funny! It's funny to lose control of your bodily functions in public! There is a cinematic tradition of using poop as a comedy prop, whether someone gets turned upside down in a port-o-potty (see: Jackass, the movie), clogs the toilet of a potential date (see: Along Came Polly, a thousand others), or just completely loses control of their bowels all together (see: Bridesmaids). In the last two examples, the characters have "the runs" due to food poisoning. They're sick, but it's still funny when they humiliate themselves. I guess I never appreciated that distinction before I got to deal with an AAC on a full time basis; I certainly laughed along with everyone else in the movie theater, but now it seems like kind of a cheap laugh, and one that hits a littttttle to close to home. 

Beyond any comedic connotations, "the runs" is just a coarse phrase. It's one of those cases where the word that describes the act is equally as disgusting or off-putting. Maybe it's because I use the word so much (to my friends, family, physicians, mailman....) but the word diarrhea doesn't gross me out the way "the runs" or (even worse!) "the squirts" do. At least "diarrhea" is somewhat respectable, and compared to the other terms, it's downright dignified. And when it comes down to it, I think that's what pisses me off the most: giving what to me (and a lot of other people) is a painful, unpleasant, occasionally debilitating condition a nickname is not respectful. It makes light of a situation that may be funny in the movies, but isn't funny in my real life. 

Back to the conversation: 

Me: Yeah sometimes. That's a part of it. 
FF: Well, that's too bad. 
Me (not really wanting to continue the conversation): Yup. 

Argh. Part of me wanted to justify just how much more Crohn's is than just a bout of diarrhea now and then: but wait! Don't you want to hear about the daytime pain? The night time pain? The endless doctor's appointments? The invasive tests? The dehydration? The malnutrition? The side effects from the meds? The sore joints? The night sweats? The hair loss!? I CAN TELL YOU ALL THE WAYS THIS DISEASE SUCKS!

But it wasn't the time or place, and I'm not the official ambassador for IBD. It's just frustrating to have someone reduce your experience to a piece of slang that doesn't begin to encompass the day to day struggles of Crohn's. Today, for instance, I ate peas for the first time in like 6 months and worried about that and had a lot of bowel movements and now I have a pain in my right side and I'm tired. And this was a good day! I ate out at a restaurant and ran errands and went shopping, all while keeping in mind where the nearest bathroom might be located. 

The last time I ate out and went shopping, a week ago, I was in the middle of Crate and Barrel when I felt that special feeling (cold sweat, cramps, pain) and knew I had about 2.5 minutes to make it to a bathroom or poop on the showroom floor. I did indeed have "the runs" and I did have to actually run to a bathroom and no, it wasn't funny, even a little bit. 

I know there is no succinct way to express this reality to people. I get it. 

If nothing else, what I take from this conversation is the desire to be more open and receptive when other people try to tell me things about their lives. To not assume I know all the answers, and to try not to belittle or reduce their experiences in any way. I'll try not to be as ass about whatever they disclose, and I'll let them tell me what it's like. 

Which I would have done with this family friend, if I thought she really wanted to know.