Nobody knows.
Well my faithful followers, I'm still alive. It's been a little over 2 months of being sick, and I can finally say that I am starting to get on the mend again. So, what's wrong with me? Well, I've been diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis.
Lemme tell ya, this thing SUCKS. I'll save the gross personal details, and if you really wanna know you can look into it for yourself. I can personally testify that everything they say about it is true and then some. Unbelievable. Incredible pain, and the life quite literally just drains out of you. For me, they told me I had an unusually bad case of it, simply because it went on for so long without treatment. It started off as just minor digestive discomfort, so I figure it was something I was eating or maybe just a stomach bug and kinda dismissed it for a few weeks, and tried eliminating things from my diet. (Dairy, one type of green or another) Didn't work. The point when I realized something wasn't right was when I couldn't wear my toolbag at work anymore cause it hurt me. And then bending over started hurting, and I was having trouble lifting and carrying things I never gave a second thought to before. That's when I decided to go see someone. I went to see our family doctor, he wasn't sure and had me go get some tests done. Had to wait a week and the results were inconclusive. Then a blood test. Again, wait a week and things were inconclusive. Then I get referred to a specialist-- a Gastroenterologist (which I never knew existed before) -- and he pokes my stomach a few times, schedules me for a colonoscopy a week down the road, and charges me $150. So, now I wait a week, get the colonoscopy (Which actually wasn't bad, they put me out so I don't remember a thing) and then after over a month of not feeling right and getting worse and worse I finally have a definite diagnoses.
Moderate to severe Ulcerative Colitis. Didn't make me excited after all I read about it, but now at least I know what I've got. He puts me on 60mg of Prednisone a day, and gives me something else to take, 'Lialda.' So I play that game for a week, one Lialda a day and 60mg of prednisone. Next week they have me taper off the predisone to 40mg a day. After a week of that then I start to get worse. I'm still not really sure why, I started bleeding alot more, I couldn't eat or drink, it just hurt too much. At this point I had lost 30lbs, and was in pretty much constant pain regardless of what I did. I pretty much just sat in an easy chair all day with a heating pad behind my back or sometimes across my stomach when the cramps got really bad. So another visit to the doctor was in order. After another visit he puts me back on 60mg of prednisone a day, tells me to take 4 lialda pills a day, gave me dicyclomine to deal wtih the stomach cramps, and then gives me another medication for heartburn. This was very discouraging to me, a grocery bag of pills being handed to me did not seem like a good solution to my problem. But, I thought, I'm in such bad shape I'll try it. Day one of taking all those rotten pills was better, I was able to eat and drink a little bit. Day 2 was as bad or worse than before. Day three was the worst. Incredible pain. I'm talking between 1 and 10, this was a full-blown 10. I've never had anything like that before. I would literally rock back and forth in a fetal position in the chair with the heating pad across my stomach. Nothing I could do. I couldn't drink, I couldn't eat, I was literally starving to death. Twice in the morning after I ate a tiny bit of breakfast just to be able to take my pills about a hour later, I woke up with such violent pain that the only way my body responded was to throw up. Not good, you lose even more strength when you throw up, plus you're losing food your body needs.
At this point I look like one of those WWII holocaust prison-camp survivors. My skeleton sticking out, my knees and elbows are thicker than my appendages. So, I came to a conclusion: all these pills are making me worse. So, no more lialda. No more dicyclomine, just sticking with the prednisone to help with bleeding and pain. Day one of that was much better. From that point on I just eased into drinking water again, couldn't drink more than about a tablespoon every hour or so at first otherwise I would once again be doubled-over in pain. Same thing with eating. Just eat a teeny-teeny bit at a time. Still had stomach pains, but at least they were only say a 4 or a 5. Occasionally I still got a good blast of full-blown number 10 pain, usually about 11:00 at night, and then again between 10 and 11 in the morning. I still don't understand why.
BTW, for anyone reading this, why would water make me cramp up so bad? If I drank juiced fruits (I'm talking real juiced fruits like run grapes, apples, oranges etc through our processor) I found I could drink alot more and not cramp up. But water killed me. So, anyone know why?
Moving on, slowly, slowly, slowly I started improving a little bit. Every day I noticed I would feel a bit better. Some days I would have a setback and not feel good, but other days I was able to walk around inside the house, get up flights of stairs with reasonable ease, and was able to eat and drink more. Then one day I got to thinking (not much else to do when you're stuck in a chair in violent pain) when I was doing heavy exercise or biking or something, drinking a big ol' gulpful of water would cramp me up. But gatorade didn't. So I stumbled into my truck (really probably wasn't safe to drive at that point, but you go crazy after a while) when down to the local gas station and bought a 32-ounce bottle of gatorade. I said, I'm gunna take it easy and experiment on this one. Before I know it I had drank probably 8 ounces in one gulp, I couldn't help it, I was just so thirsty. I sat in the truck in the parking lot waiting for a stab of paint. 5 minutes. Nothing. 10 minutes, nothing. 15 minutes, nothing. Hmm. I went home, and poured the rest of the bottle into a big glass cup with ice and a straw. I sat down in my 'Misery Chair,' and drank that thing down so fast I didn't know what happened. Then I thought, oh boy here comes the pain. but nothing. I ended up falling asleep, and then about a hour later I woke up and felt so awesome. My body had FLUIDS in it! I had some hydration. I immidiatly went out and bought more gatordae. For a few days I drank pretty much only gatorade, then started halfing it with water (I would rather not drink corn syrup and all that other crap all the time) and then making it weaker and weaker until it's just water. That's right ladies and gentlemen, I can now drink WATER again! I also found myself able to eat more and more. Eating slowly, chewing your food very thoroughly, and drinking water whilest eating all seemed to help.
Slowly, I'm getting my strength back. I would say about mid last week is when I started feeling quite a bit better. I'm starting to gain weight again, I can eat and drink pretty much without consequence, and I'm starting to be able to function a little bit. I can go outside and putter around with stuff, tinkering with things, and I actually mowed the lawn the other day. Occasionally I'll go on walks, and I've been haunting the local gunshops again, which is a sure-fire sign I'm on the mend. I even when fishing with my little brother for a few hours sunday afternoon. (Nope, didn't catch anything)
So for right now, I'm feeling alot better than I was. I can almost live again. It's still tough, every day is a battle, and everything I do I have to be careful not to push myself too much. Sometimes it'll be like switching a light on and off. All of a sudden I'll just crash and hafta to sit down for a bit, and sometimes take a nap. I still have discomfort, and minor stomach cramps and pains, and I still have diarrhea and all those other awesome things, but praise the Lord I actually feel pretty good.
On a sidenote, now that my body is coming back around, I've noticed a few other things. Prednisone is nasty stuff. I absolutely hate that crap. Tellin ya, sometimes I wake up at night and I've got no idea who I am. I actually think I'm somebody else. And now my feet, legs, and knees are swelling up pretty bad, another side effect. my legs are sometimes so stiff that I hafta move like a robot, pretty irritating. Now I'm starting to notice my face and body swelling up, too. It also makes you get over heated really easy in warm weather, so I hafta be careful. I absolutely hate taking those pills, and would love for nothing more than to light 'em on fire and throw em out the window, but I don't dare do that for fear of falling back again. Not to mention everybody keeps telling me 'Don't just drop it, you need to taper it off properly.' And judging by the side effects I would hafta agree. Probably go into some kind of crazy withdrawl. Another side effect is you're hungry all the time. I've been eating like a horse lately, and all I think about is food. I'll eat an unbelievable amount of food, and then think about when and what my next meal will be. Right now, that's probably a good thing, putting on weight would be beneficial. But I hafta wonder in the long-term how bad would it be. Another thing that prednizone does is make you very.. uhmmm... Angry. It's strange, I'll just get so aggrivated with someone or something over absolutely nothing. I literally hafta bite my tongue and walk away or I'll say something incredibly nasty. And then 5 minutes later I'll be fine.
In conclusion, throughout all of this I've realized that true healing comes from the Lord, and the Lord alone. All of these doctors, and pills and all that other stuff, it might help, btu God is really the only one in control. I credit everything to Him. And I'd also like to thank any and everyone who's been praying for me, not many people on here, but family and friends all over the place. So many people have come together offering their help, in forms of diet suggestions, probiotic vitamins, equipment, medical assistance forms I could fill out, and prayers, and that was really an eye-opener for me. Nothing says strength in brotherhood like everyone uniting as they did. I can only hope and pray that I'll be able to do the same for someone else.
Now, another thing about this whole incident is cost. Yeeowch. Between all the tests, and the colonoscopy, the doctors visits it adds up to about $5100-$5500. And that's just so they could tell me what was wrong with me, let alone heal you. The prescriptions are on you. But at least the prednisone is cheap. The doctors bills and one of my blood test bills are pretty much non-negotiable, so I already paid those off, but the hospital bills, which are the really outrageous ones, anyways, they gave me a form to fill out that lists your 'assets,' and income, etc and they'll decide whether or not they'll cut down on your payments based on that. So, we'll see. They told me about a weeks wait, and I dropped it off last friday. Hopefully they cut down the payments, cause I sure hate spending money like that. A blessing is at least I have (had) money put away.
And no, I didn't have health insurance, I thought I was superman. I was eating incredibly healthy, and I was in good shape. Through the winter, work was pretty slow, so I took the time and applied myself to the weights pretty hard core. Now, I did weigh about 170-175lbs, and could benchpress 250lbs, I was curling 55lb dumbells in each hand, I did quite a bit of graded acceleration, and just literally spent hours at a time working out. In short, I was in pretty darn good shape. And I was eating super-healthy, like I said, I thought I was superman.
WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!!
So this begs the question, what the heck caused this thing? Well, nobody including myself really knows for sure. I have a few theories. One is stress. Lack of work kinda makes me anxious. Most of my companions were off at school or just too busy with their lives at the time. Isolation, not that I'm a huge social butterfly, but I do like contact and activity with people. The next stress-related thing is politics. You all know how vehemently opposed I am with everything going on in the political zoo, and I think just watching everything crumbling around me killed me. I made so many phone calls, sent so many letters, faxes, E-Mails. I fought with everything I could, and it all failed. they just ignored it and plowed ahead with all of their evil agenda.
Another aspect to consider: diet. Like I said, I was eating super-healthy, and I have to wonder if that was another cause. You see, every morning I would take the blender, put spinach or kale, I cycled it every other day, 2 oranges, 1 or 2 bananas, ground flax seed meal, blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, water and whatever else I felt like that day and blend it all up. I'd fill up a thermos I'd either take to work or just drink later, and drink the rest down for breakfast. Now I've been doing that for I would say about 1 1/2 - 2 years. more steadily in the last year. That's a pretty super-charged shot of everything. Pretty extreme. Through the spring, summer adn fall I felt incredibly well, just about peak I think. Lots of energy, I slept well, all that stuff. But in wintertime things changed. like I said, I started getting more anxious with work slowing down, and the shakes didn't 'taste,' good to me anymore. That should've sparked something right off the bat. You need to listen to what your body is telling you. Not working meant I was not doing as much physical exercise. Previously, I would work a full day, come home and lift weights and then do my other stuff, like wrenching on junks or shooting or just whatever. I burned alot of calories, and my body needed those nutrients. But, during the winter, I think I was constantly overloading my system with nutrients it didn't need, and since my body wasn't using it, all those rough greens were doing not good things in my GI tract. Even though I was lifting weights more, I wasn't doing as much exercise. Yes my body was moving, but it wasn't using everything up. I came to find out now that rough greens and seeds (Like flaxseed meal) are very bad when you have a colitis flare-up. So, when I started getting bad, I actually first tried to up the ante by eating more greens, thinking I was going to 'supercharge,' myself back to health. Heh, yeah. I think that compounded it even more, cause that's when I REALLY took a nosedive. And the funny thing is, my body didn't want to eat or drink those things, I forced it down.
So did I do it to myself? I think I sorta did. I've also read it's genetic, and a few people in my family have had one flare-up in their life, and nothing more. So hopefully that'll be my story, too. I never ever want to do this again. here I stand, or sit rather, a shadow of who I was before physically, and of a much humbler mindset I believe. I still don't understand why the Lord allowed this to happen, or what purpose it'll serve, but maybe down the road I will. I keep thinking of Job.
So kids, just say no to ulcerative colitis. Just don't do it. It's no good.
Lemme tell ya, this thing SUCKS. I'll save the gross personal details, and if you really wanna know you can look into it for yourself. I can personally testify that everything they say about it is true and then some. Unbelievable. Incredible pain, and the life quite literally just drains out of you. For me, they told me I had an unusually bad case of it, simply because it went on for so long without treatment. It started off as just minor digestive discomfort, so I figure it was something I was eating or maybe just a stomach bug and kinda dismissed it for a few weeks, and tried eliminating things from my diet. (Dairy, one type of green or another) Didn't work. The point when I realized something wasn't right was when I couldn't wear my toolbag at work anymore cause it hurt me. And then bending over started hurting, and I was having trouble lifting and carrying things I never gave a second thought to before. That's when I decided to go see someone. I went to see our family doctor, he wasn't sure and had me go get some tests done. Had to wait a week and the results were inconclusive. Then a blood test. Again, wait a week and things were inconclusive. Then I get referred to a specialist-- a Gastroenterologist (which I never knew existed before) -- and he pokes my stomach a few times, schedules me for a colonoscopy a week down the road, and charges me $150. So, now I wait a week, get the colonoscopy (Which actually wasn't bad, they put me out so I don't remember a thing) and then after over a month of not feeling right and getting worse and worse I finally have a definite diagnoses.
Moderate to severe Ulcerative Colitis. Didn't make me excited after all I read about it, but now at least I know what I've got. He puts me on 60mg of Prednisone a day, and gives me something else to take, 'Lialda.' So I play that game for a week, one Lialda a day and 60mg of prednisone. Next week they have me taper off the predisone to 40mg a day. After a week of that then I start to get worse. I'm still not really sure why, I started bleeding alot more, I couldn't eat or drink, it just hurt too much. At this point I had lost 30lbs, and was in pretty much constant pain regardless of what I did. I pretty much just sat in an easy chair all day with a heating pad behind my back or sometimes across my stomach when the cramps got really bad. So another visit to the doctor was in order. After another visit he puts me back on 60mg of prednisone a day, tells me to take 4 lialda pills a day, gave me dicyclomine to deal wtih the stomach cramps, and then gives me another medication for heartburn. This was very discouraging to me, a grocery bag of pills being handed to me did not seem like a good solution to my problem. But, I thought, I'm in such bad shape I'll try it. Day one of taking all those rotten pills was better, I was able to eat and drink a little bit. Day 2 was as bad or worse than before. Day three was the worst. Incredible pain. I'm talking between 1 and 10, this was a full-blown 10. I've never had anything like that before. I would literally rock back and forth in a fetal position in the chair with the heating pad across my stomach. Nothing I could do. I couldn't drink, I couldn't eat, I was literally starving to death. Twice in the morning after I ate a tiny bit of breakfast just to be able to take my pills about a hour later, I woke up with such violent pain that the only way my body responded was to throw up. Not good, you lose even more strength when you throw up, plus you're losing food your body needs.
At this point I look like one of those WWII holocaust prison-camp survivors. My skeleton sticking out, my knees and elbows are thicker than my appendages. So, I came to a conclusion: all these pills are making me worse. So, no more lialda. No more dicyclomine, just sticking with the prednisone to help with bleeding and pain. Day one of that was much better. From that point on I just eased into drinking water again, couldn't drink more than about a tablespoon every hour or so at first otherwise I would once again be doubled-over in pain. Same thing with eating. Just eat a teeny-teeny bit at a time. Still had stomach pains, but at least they were only say a 4 or a 5. Occasionally I still got a good blast of full-blown number 10 pain, usually about 11:00 at night, and then again between 10 and 11 in the morning. I still don't understand why.
BTW, for anyone reading this, why would water make me cramp up so bad? If I drank juiced fruits (I'm talking real juiced fruits like run grapes, apples, oranges etc through our processor) I found I could drink alot more and not cramp up. But water killed me. So, anyone know why?
Moving on, slowly, slowly, slowly I started improving a little bit. Every day I noticed I would feel a bit better. Some days I would have a setback and not feel good, but other days I was able to walk around inside the house, get up flights of stairs with reasonable ease, and was able to eat and drink more. Then one day I got to thinking (not much else to do when you're stuck in a chair in violent pain) when I was doing heavy exercise or biking or something, drinking a big ol' gulpful of water would cramp me up. But gatorade didn't. So I stumbled into my truck (really probably wasn't safe to drive at that point, but you go crazy after a while) when down to the local gas station and bought a 32-ounce bottle of gatorade. I said, I'm gunna take it easy and experiment on this one. Before I know it I had drank probably 8 ounces in one gulp, I couldn't help it, I was just so thirsty. I sat in the truck in the parking lot waiting for a stab of paint. 5 minutes. Nothing. 10 minutes, nothing. 15 minutes, nothing. Hmm. I went home, and poured the rest of the bottle into a big glass cup with ice and a straw. I sat down in my 'Misery Chair,' and drank that thing down so fast I didn't know what happened. Then I thought, oh boy here comes the pain. but nothing. I ended up falling asleep, and then about a hour later I woke up and felt so awesome. My body had FLUIDS in it! I had some hydration. I immidiatly went out and bought more gatordae. For a few days I drank pretty much only gatorade, then started halfing it with water (I would rather not drink corn syrup and all that other crap all the time) and then making it weaker and weaker until it's just water. That's right ladies and gentlemen, I can now drink WATER again! I also found myself able to eat more and more. Eating slowly, chewing your food very thoroughly, and drinking water whilest eating all seemed to help.
Slowly, I'm getting my strength back. I would say about mid last week is when I started feeling quite a bit better. I'm starting to gain weight again, I can eat and drink pretty much without consequence, and I'm starting to be able to function a little bit. I can go outside and putter around with stuff, tinkering with things, and I actually mowed the lawn the other day. Occasionally I'll go on walks, and I've been haunting the local gunshops again, which is a sure-fire sign I'm on the mend. I even when fishing with my little brother for a few hours sunday afternoon. (Nope, didn't catch anything)
So for right now, I'm feeling alot better than I was. I can almost live again. It's still tough, every day is a battle, and everything I do I have to be careful not to push myself too much. Sometimes it'll be like switching a light on and off. All of a sudden I'll just crash and hafta to sit down for a bit, and sometimes take a nap. I still have discomfort, and minor stomach cramps and pains, and I still have diarrhea and all those other awesome things, but praise the Lord I actually feel pretty good.
On a sidenote, now that my body is coming back around, I've noticed a few other things. Prednisone is nasty stuff. I absolutely hate that crap. Tellin ya, sometimes I wake up at night and I've got no idea who I am. I actually think I'm somebody else. And now my feet, legs, and knees are swelling up pretty bad, another side effect. my legs are sometimes so stiff that I hafta move like a robot, pretty irritating. Now I'm starting to notice my face and body swelling up, too. It also makes you get over heated really easy in warm weather, so I hafta be careful. I absolutely hate taking those pills, and would love for nothing more than to light 'em on fire and throw em out the window, but I don't dare do that for fear of falling back again. Not to mention everybody keeps telling me 'Don't just drop it, you need to taper it off properly.' And judging by the side effects I would hafta agree. Probably go into some kind of crazy withdrawl. Another side effect is you're hungry all the time. I've been eating like a horse lately, and all I think about is food. I'll eat an unbelievable amount of food, and then think about when and what my next meal will be. Right now, that's probably a good thing, putting on weight would be beneficial. But I hafta wonder in the long-term how bad would it be. Another thing that prednizone does is make you very.. uhmmm... Angry. It's strange, I'll just get so aggrivated with someone or something over absolutely nothing. I literally hafta bite my tongue and walk away or I'll say something incredibly nasty. And then 5 minutes later I'll be fine.
In conclusion, throughout all of this I've realized that true healing comes from the Lord, and the Lord alone. All of these doctors, and pills and all that other stuff, it might help, btu God is really the only one in control. I credit everything to Him. And I'd also like to thank any and everyone who's been praying for me, not many people on here, but family and friends all over the place. So many people have come together offering their help, in forms of diet suggestions, probiotic vitamins, equipment, medical assistance forms I could fill out, and prayers, and that was really an eye-opener for me. Nothing says strength in brotherhood like everyone uniting as they did. I can only hope and pray that I'll be able to do the same for someone else.
Now, another thing about this whole incident is cost. Yeeowch. Between all the tests, and the colonoscopy, the doctors visits it adds up to about $5100-$5500. And that's just so they could tell me what was wrong with me, let alone heal you. The prescriptions are on you. But at least the prednisone is cheap. The doctors bills and one of my blood test bills are pretty much non-negotiable, so I already paid those off, but the hospital bills, which are the really outrageous ones, anyways, they gave me a form to fill out that lists your 'assets,' and income, etc and they'll decide whether or not they'll cut down on your payments based on that. So, we'll see. They told me about a weeks wait, and I dropped it off last friday. Hopefully they cut down the payments, cause I sure hate spending money like that. A blessing is at least I have (had) money put away.
And no, I didn't have health insurance, I thought I was superman. I was eating incredibly healthy, and I was in good shape. Through the winter, work was pretty slow, so I took the time and applied myself to the weights pretty hard core. Now, I did weigh about 170-175lbs, and could benchpress 250lbs, I was curling 55lb dumbells in each hand, I did quite a bit of graded acceleration, and just literally spent hours at a time working out. In short, I was in pretty darn good shape. And I was eating super-healthy, like I said, I thought I was superman.
WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!!
So this begs the question, what the heck caused this thing? Well, nobody including myself really knows for sure. I have a few theories. One is stress. Lack of work kinda makes me anxious. Most of my companions were off at school or just too busy with their lives at the time. Isolation, not that I'm a huge social butterfly, but I do like contact and activity with people. The next stress-related thing is politics. You all know how vehemently opposed I am with everything going on in the political zoo, and I think just watching everything crumbling around me killed me. I made so many phone calls, sent so many letters, faxes, E-Mails. I fought with everything I could, and it all failed. they just ignored it and plowed ahead with all of their evil agenda.
Another aspect to consider: diet. Like I said, I was eating super-healthy, and I have to wonder if that was another cause. You see, every morning I would take the blender, put spinach or kale, I cycled it every other day, 2 oranges, 1 or 2 bananas, ground flax seed meal, blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, water and whatever else I felt like that day and blend it all up. I'd fill up a thermos I'd either take to work or just drink later, and drink the rest down for breakfast. Now I've been doing that for I would say about 1 1/2 - 2 years. more steadily in the last year. That's a pretty super-charged shot of everything. Pretty extreme. Through the spring, summer adn fall I felt incredibly well, just about peak I think. Lots of energy, I slept well, all that stuff. But in wintertime things changed. like I said, I started getting more anxious with work slowing down, and the shakes didn't 'taste,' good to me anymore. That should've sparked something right off the bat. You need to listen to what your body is telling you. Not working meant I was not doing as much physical exercise. Previously, I would work a full day, come home and lift weights and then do my other stuff, like wrenching on junks or shooting or just whatever. I burned alot of calories, and my body needed those nutrients. But, during the winter, I think I was constantly overloading my system with nutrients it didn't need, and since my body wasn't using it, all those rough greens were doing not good things in my GI tract. Even though I was lifting weights more, I wasn't doing as much exercise. Yes my body was moving, but it wasn't using everything up. I came to find out now that rough greens and seeds (Like flaxseed meal) are very bad when you have a colitis flare-up. So, when I started getting bad, I actually first tried to up the ante by eating more greens, thinking I was going to 'supercharge,' myself back to health. Heh, yeah. I think that compounded it even more, cause that's when I REALLY took a nosedive. And the funny thing is, my body didn't want to eat or drink those things, I forced it down.
So did I do it to myself? I think I sorta did. I've also read it's genetic, and a few people in my family have had one flare-up in their life, and nothing more. So hopefully that'll be my story, too. I never ever want to do this again. here I stand, or sit rather, a shadow of who I was before physically, and of a much humbler mindset I believe. I still don't understand why the Lord allowed this to happen, or what purpose it'll serve, but maybe down the road I will. I keep thinking of Job.
So kids, just say no to ulcerative colitis. Just don't do it. It's no good.