Food Fight!

"Eating good for my belly is crushing my soul."--Me, as I stared down my third bowl of quinoa gruel in as many days.

Ahoy, mateys!  I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted, but I haven't had much news to report.  That is, unless you count numerous episodes of public pooping, overnight cramping, or rectal bleeding as news. 

You do count all that as news?  Oh.  In that case, I'd better fill you in....

Once I came back from my trip to the mountains with my friends, I had a little "come to Jesus" talk with myself about getting on track and doing my part to help my little "passengers" achieve their mission.  To me, that means watching my diet, and that, in turn, means eating smaller meals, eating less challenging foods, and cutting way back on sweets, wheat, and caffeine. 

So for the last few weeks, I've been trying to follow this advice--with a break for St. Patrick's Day--but it hasn't done me any good, at least not in terms of easing my symptoms.  Still running to the bathroom at inopportune times, still getting tummy grumbles after eating anything at all, still having unexplained cramping overnight and seeing too much blood in the toilet.  I'll admit I'm not the most stringent follower of these dietary guidelines, but shouldn't the modest improvements I have made be yielding any kind of benefit?

(Many of my IBD friends will read that and shake their heads, and as they sip delicately from their small cup of organic green tea with kombucha brewed for exactly 3 minutes with pure spring water, they will think to themselves, "C'mon Nancy.  You know there is no 'try.'  There is only 'do.'" And others will gulp from their super grande moccachinos and think, "Yeah, it's just not fair.")

Meanwhile, I have been continuing to drop my prednisone dose by one mg./day per week and am now down to 5 mg.  However, I've decided to settle in at this dose and see if I can stabilize before I go any further.

Sure, it's a little discouraging.  I am now about 9 weeks out from when I introduced those little whipworms into my system, and although I know darn well that different people react differently, deep down, I thought I'd be one of those people who started to feel better within just a few weeks.  But now that I think about it, I'm not even sure how that's possible, since those little buggers are probably not even all grown up and attached to my colon yet.  If you check out the lifecycle of the whipworm on wikipedia, they'll tell you it takes up to three months for those babies to grow up and go to work.  (For what that's worth.)

But what I'm dealing with now is not even so much about what's taking those worms so long to get going, I'm in the throes now about worrying about the persistence of some of the worst of my symptoms.  Had there been no worms and I was having these symptoms, I'd probably be in my dr.'s office right now talking about where to go now, even though I know the answer would basically be a shrug of the shoulders and a sheepish, "Maybe we should increase your prednisone....?"  So instead, I'm just kind of trying to ride it out, hopeful that in just a few more weeks, things will be looking up.

In the meantime, life is getting in the way of this little medical experiment of mine.  After leaving a job interview last week, I found myself driving to my next appointment and realizing that I had probably 2 minutes to find a bathroom.  Well, guess what?  I didn't make it.  So then, instead of being on my way to that appointment, I found myself turning the car around and driving home to clean myself up and change my clothes before getting back on track and finishing my errands as if nothing had happened.  I got through the afternoon and evening okay, but the next day was AWFUL...I spent the whole day in bed.  I was achy and had tons of muscle soreness.  My brain felt foggy and I was exhausted.  Oh yes, and dehydrated.  So dehydrated.

Once I felt better, things got back to normal a little bit.  This Sunday, John and I even resumed our weekly trip to the grocery store via bicycle.  I love that little warm weather ritual.  But of course, we got not halfway through the store before I had to make a mad dash to the bathroom.  And then, not 10 minutes later, I had to abandon our cart in the dairy section for another trip to the loo.  Imagine all that, and then realizing, "Hmmm.  And now I have to ride a bicycle loaded with 20 pounds of groceries home."  At least it's only a few miles, and all downhill, at that!

All of this makes it sound like things have been unrelentingly bad for the last few weeks, and that's just not true.  It's just that I have had a few more "bad days" and those days have been a bit worse than I'm used to.  Even though I didn't feel great yesterday, I was able to walk my dog without incident, and even jog around the neighborhood park a little.  But, on the flip side, I didn't feel confident enough to go for a long walk with a friend.  Today I have another job interview, and you'd better believe I'm going to leave myself plenty of time for a bathroom stop beforehand AND make sure I visit the loo again afterward.  But then I'm meeting a friend for a drink this afternoon--and who knows, if I'm feeling okay, maybe I will sip on an actual DRINK.

As I've been saying from the beginning, my friends, this is a journey I'm on.  And right now, it's a roller coaster ride more than anything else.  As usual, I'll just hang in there and keep trying to live a normal life.  Or some semblance thereof.