doctor

Being in the hospital with Crohn’s disease is miserable.

But before I get too negative, I have to confirm one major benefit to having an ostomy and being hospitalized: it’s a lot easier to give stool samples now. I don’t even need a toilet!

Anyways, while a lot of us who have chronic diseases often laugh it off or put on a happy face, and post to our social media accounts, it’s a slog. It’s not fun. You think long and hard and try anything and everything to avoid a hospitalization—and sometimes the stress you get from that makes the situation even worse!

As a Geerling, when a situation goes upside-down I turn to humor. If you need evidence, go read The Joy of Crohn's. Back? Good.

Take today, for example. Day 3 stuck in a hospital due to complications from having Crohn's disease.

I'm in a bit of an awkward situation: I'm mostly fine, and I can walk around, do most things normally, talk, eat, etc. But I have this one little problem: My poop (due to having Crohn's disease) has gone thermonuclear, and it's now affecting my health.

Apparently I have this thing called CMV Colitis. It's one of a number of ailments that either exclusively affects immunocompromised patients (generally, people with IBD, Crohn's, Lupus, etc.), or makes said patients waaaay worse off than your average person. Like, nearly fatal instead of a low grade fever!

Anyways, picture an average week in a Crohnie's life:

Alternate title: How I survive 8 hours on a toilet, then enjoy the most relaxing 30 minute nap of my life

I still haven't decided if gastrointestinal doctors are genuinely caring, or sociopaths.

If you have Crohn's or some other form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), or if you're 50 or some multiple of ten beyond that, chances are you've had one or more colonoscopies. If you're even luckier, and have active and/or moderate-to-severe IBD, there's a good chance you've averaged at least one colonoscopy per year (my current record is two in a year!).

I'm prepping for my (by my count) 8th colonoscopy tonight, and while I still have the energy, I figured I might as well write something about the process, in the hope that I can make the process slightly better for you. There's something about sitting on a shiny white porcelain object that makes one wax eloquently about... human waste?

This week I've been visiting doctors, getting checkups, getting tests, and generally being a lab rat. My health has been better, so any prayers you could spare could be appreciated... but enough about me!

Since I've been feeling not-so-good lately, and since the whole HHS mandate fiasco's been so annoying to me, I've felt relatively pessimistic in the past week.

Well, during one of the many waiting room visits (I hesitate to call them doctor visits, since I usually spend more time in the waiting room ;-), I heard a lullaby play over the hospital's PA system. Nobody seemed to notice it, but I asked one of the receptionists what the lullaby meant (I figured maybe it was employee nap time or something like that, being 3 in the afternoon...).

When she told me that a baby was just born in the labor and delivery area, a little tear caught in my eye. What a great thing to have happen while I was sitting there!

A few days later, I was back in the waiting area for a while, and just before I was called to get a test done, I heard the lullaby again (awesome!)... and about a minute later, another lullaby!