Good thing

Yet again, I stress that no news is good news for my Crohn's blog (unless, of course, you get a call from my husband saying otherwise). I'm doing well! After all that stressing about the lessening steroids, I'm doing fine.

I go to my doctor August 7 for another check-up, and we'll see what happens then. I spoke with a distant relative of mine over the weekend who said that her son was recently diagnosed with Crohn's, but they discovered it simultaneously with discovering that he needed immediate surgery. He had absesses on his intestines, I think growing on the walls of the intestines, not the insides. Yikes. He had surgery and is doing much better, but is having stricturing inside his intestines now and those little tunnels that connect inside your body but aren't supposed to... what are they called?... fistulas (I had to look it up online, which is something my husband doesn't recommend I do, for good reason--I'm highly suggestible).

Anyway, needless to say, he's having complications from his surgery, but he's better off than those absesses breaking open inside his intestinal cavity, which is what had started to happen. And his mom mentioned that the doctors would have preferred to do surgery when he was not so inflammed and in trouble, and she thinks that's probably part of why he's having complications now. He had 18" of his small intestines removed with an ostomy for 3 months (which I don't think is too bad, considering how much they took out). He probably has to go to the bathroom a lot more now, but that's a small price to pay for not living in the hospital.

I was able to give his mom some information that I've learned: about the need to manage stress, about not holding in your emotions, about relaxing your body and mind when you eat, about praying and trusting in God. She was very interested, and wanted to know the title and author of the book I love ("Eating Right for a Bad Gut").

It felt good to help her, but it was also hard to hear (as it always is for me) of someone else's really hard time with Crohn's. I don't really like hearing other people's stories, unless they're positive. Ridiculous and escapist, I know. It's just such a wiley disease that you hear these horror stories and can't count on escaping those horrors yourself. Lord, have mercy.