🏷️ health

I went back to the chiropractor today because my neck was so messed up from computing with a 3rd monitor and then plumbing a drain in a cold draft. I am always amazed at our fast a chiropractic appointment is.

I seriously could only turn my head about 25 degrees either way the last few days - which I have to say is a serious driving danger. I never realized how much I turn my head until, I couldn't. Same with walking and trying to cross the street. It is way dangerous to turn your whole body because you can't do it very quick.

I already have a little more range but this time I think it my neck injruy was worse. I still can't really turn to the left very far. He said I would be in pain tonight and maybe tomorrow and to call him if it gets worse tomorrow and to schedule a follow up appointment on Monday. He also said I should relax, drink lots of fluids and look straight ahead for the rest of the evening. I really want to go to the massage therapist now. I wish I could go now. Are their 24 hours massage places or is that sketchy and really a different line of work once it is 24 hours.

Run white boy run
I was almost late for the Chiropractor this evening because I stayed at work talking to my teammates about some computer situation we were having. So I started to run home down Washington in order to get the car and a gaggle of ghetto trash coming out of the subway yelling run whitey, run or something and then they were all laughing and yelling more. Maybe that is how they take out their aggression about the unfairness built into our society. At least it wasn't with guns. Besides, I was secretly laughing on the inside thinking about their lives - tragic. I guess that makes me a bad person - whatever. Sometimes I think I should just buy one of those shooting tazers from out of state.

Argh, the steroids are starting to give me zits on my face. I never had zits like this before.

I went to go give blood for so many tests this morning by Quest Diagnostics over at 191 North street. They have the best web site ever. It isn't super pretty or anything but you make appointments online and then they give you a google map to your appointment. not only that if you put in your google acct data, they add it to you google calendar. It is so nice to be able to arrange it all online and I applaud them as the best meical website I have dealt with so far.

I will finally see if I have any food allergies to things like wheat and corn and I think it is a little more accurate than the hold the glass jar with flour in it technique at the naturopath, lol.

When I first got there, the phlebotomist could not read the prescription sheet and told me I would have to come back. I was so angry I stormed out and knocked some shit over by accident but I was so angry I didn't pick it up - which mad it look like it was on purpose.

It was a tense moment but once I was outside I realized I needed to get this done now and that I was not going to fast again and I wanted the test now - so I called the doctors cell phone and got her to talk to him. He had refused to call himself because he said the doctors are really mean when he calls and they yell at him. Luckily, my doctor is really nice.

In the end, it worked out great because he ws the best plebotomist I ever had. I didn't even feel the needle go in my arm or notice as they filled five tubes with blood. I wonder what I will find out, maybe that it is bad to eat 2 eggs for breakfast everyday?

It was amazing compared to the nurse in the hospital that I think stabbed through my vein it hurt so bad and swelled up.

So I called the Dr. Visco's office for like the fifth time today trying to get my biopsy results. I knew he probably deals with it everyday but for me I don't and I was really anxious waiting a week to find out. So then when the secretary read it to me she didn't mentions Crohn's and so I said, "Doesn't you mean to say Crohn's somewhere?" and she said it didn't say it anywhere on there. Needless to say I asked the doctor to call me back as I am so sick of talking to secretaries at this point. I think this is the same woman that said IBS when she meant IBD originally and caused the whole unbelievability factor with my former primary care physician.

So Dr. Visco calls me back like 4 hours later to say that the biopsy was consistent with their findings that I had ulcerative colitis but I am sure that he told me Crohn's before, @terry remembers it too. He wants to see me again in four weeks. Seriously, even though Ulcerative Colitis can be life long and really bad, and you can lose you large intestine - it stops there - unlike Crohns which can kind of go anywhere from you mouth to your butt and can wreck you small intestine.

He also said I had crytptitis or something like that where the cells in my intestine that mature into normal intestine cells where messed or inflamed. I wish I understood it better. Frankly, I just wish he described it better.

Is this good news? I wish I knew.

Intestines... I know that you are probably so tired about hearing about this as I am tired of living it, but I figure it will be good to look back on the whole experience someday.

I thought it was all better. Well, not all better but seriously from the scope on wed to sat I was doing so good. I took my medicine with every meal and I ate exactly what i was supposed to. I was even abe to go out all afternoon on saturday with no real problems. Then starting last night at like 11PM it all started getting achey again. My intestine started getting all achy and spastic and painful. I didn't eat anything weird and I know what is in all my food as I cook everything now- at every meal.

I haven't had any dairy since the scope to see if that made a difference and I thought maybe it did. I hadn't eaten any wheat either - that is until yesterday afternoon when I had two slices of wheat bread. Maybe that was it.

I really need to get tested for food allergies just to make sure I don't eat anything I am allergic to with my already stressed system. It makes me so sad to think it will not get better. In fact, when I was in line at the coop buying some soy yogurt and ocean perch I almost started crying because I thought - now food is ruined for me and some sad 80s song was playing. The one social, kind of nice thing I liked to do besides compute was eat and it is all ruined. Living with Crohns is seriously going to kill me mentally if not physically.

I was also freaked out by a white guy dressed as an muslim with desert head garb thing and all. Call me ethnocentric but he was white as white bread, with a black dude and looked weird to me. It was just a strange combo and apparently my medicine makes me moody.

Just imagine this guy but a white looking white bread guy inside.


As soon as I found that pic above, I found this one, which explains it so much better


If this continues I am seriously going to need some sort of anti-depressant, pain medication myself.

Well the doctor is pretty sure I have a long term chronic disease called Crohn's disease now that will probably make me go insane. That is not a side effect but knowing my ability to cope with stuff I think insanity might be in store.

Apparently, it is really bad that I didn't take the medicine before. I promise I will now. 9 Pills a day of asacol and I don't know how many yet of steriods. I never took steroid before - do they make you feel weird.

Here are the insides of my colon looking all sick and yucky.



I guess it helps to have a doctor who is a cousin. He told me it is genetic and when I said I didn't think anyone in my family had it, he said I was wrong.

It was so nice of @jenks to shows up and check on me as I woke up. It meant a lot.

More love for my new carrier
First another bonus to ATT. I just called a number I saw at our Human Resources for ATT discounts and when I called the representative, she applied a 24% discount to my account. That is a seriously significant discount.

Clear Liquid Diet Day
I didn't even start with my first clear liquid drink of the day but decided to weigh myself just to see how much weight I will lose through the whole laxative process before the scope tomorrow. Looks like I weighed in at 138 - and that is before. Just how little can I weight, like how much is @paul without the food in him. I really don't know how laxative are going to help get any more out of me. Seeing as my body seems to take care of that by itself.

Here is an example day from

Breakfast Hot tea with lemon juice and 1 tsp sugar (no pulp); Apple juice (8 oz); Gelatin 1 cup
Lunch     Hot tea with lemon (no pulp) and sugar; Grape juice (8 oz); Fruit Ice (1 cup); Consommé (8 oz.)
Snack     Fruit juice (apple, cranberry or grape, 8 oz); Gelatin (1 cup)
Dinner     Hot tea with lemon and sugar; Apple juice (8 oz); Consommé (8 oz); Fruit Ice (1 cup)

I think I am just going to need to be sedated. Does vodka count in clear liquid diet? I seriously get crazy just missing one meal as I don't have much reserves.

Mind you just before thanksgiving I weighed about 150. So I figure at this rate I should be down to 100 lbs by summer. I think that is my target "die at" weight. That was supposed to be a pun on diet but it just sounds sad. Kind of like @vincent said - if you get down to 150 and then you get sick it's too on the edge. Welcome to my life.

I am so freakin' scared. Things like this scare me to death. For some reason I am not really able to handle this so well. How are other people so good at coping with body based problems? They just make me feel so temporary. I think had it been anything else I could have lived with it. Save for maybe some injury to my penis. But messing with eating and sleeping ruins everythign for me. In my sad, non social existence, going out to eat was probably the only fun thing I did - and now that is ruined. There is nothig else to do in the winter fr me. I guess i oucld program more, or pick up some other stupid hobby but I really miss the social interaction that is eating.

At least I have a job that I can do without much physical effort. Imagine if I had a physically stressful, non-union job right now. I would probably end up being fired and losing my health insurance if I had any to begin with. I guess I am lucky in a way and should stop complaining. But it doesn't make it any less scary. I suppose it would all be much better if I had a doctor I communicated with I think the scariness is not really knowing anything or what to expect.

I cannot wait until my gastro appointment on the 24th. I will call tehm today and ask if there are any other earlier appointments.

I had like one good day just before the party. It was weird. I felt a lot better and then it all just went downhill. This mornign was the worst as I had these horrible waves of nausea mxied with about 10 visits to the bathroom throughout the night.

So next Wednesday I have a colonscopy that requires me to go on a 24 hour liquid and laxative diet. That should be fun, adding to the constant intestinal pain and cramping I have been having for over a month now. It is worst when my stomach is empty so i imagine this is going to be beyond painful.

I have this horrible feeling I am going to die soon. Maybe I can just die beforehand.

It still seems unreasonable to me that up to this point, almost two month after the initial bad symptoms started I still haven't had a since blood test to check anything or a single stool sample. Only one xray. I keep reading all the literature from the different organizations for intestinal medicine and they all talk about blood tests to check white blood cell count and iron levels for anemia and stool smaples to check for infections and parasites as a first step.

I freakin' cannot wait till my doctors appointment with the gastroenterologist on the 24th. I would pay like 10 fold the amount to hve it tomorrow.

I really don't know what to do yet. My colonoscopy is on the 6th I think or the 9th. I need to check but the "doctor" who I have never actually seen or heard from since I first spoke with him a month ago prescribed asacol.

But no one told me what to expect. The serious side effects that should force you to stop taking th emedicine are some of the very symptoms I am supposed to take the medicine for which iis just screaming too dangerous for me.

I found this site where people talk about the effectiveness versus side effects of the medicine's for colitis and it seriously has a 3 out of 6 stars for 127 ratings. I wouldn't normally buy something with that kind of rating. I mean if that was a test I would say it was failing.

Check out the reviews I just refuse to take it until after I have spoken to a GI doctor or at least the Colon doctor I already have.

THE GI doctor had an opening before my Feb 6th appointment. They called me this morning. I was all excited because I thought it was maybe today but instead it is on Jan 22, the day of my birthday, freakin' yeah.

I slept though it pretty much the whole thing. I just thought if I kept on sleeping I wouldnt have to deal with he stomach drama, which kind of, a tiny bit, improved.

Bye bye, little tooth part
Then this morning I woke up after a 20 hour nap because my back was starting to hurt from sleeping and was brushing my teeth when a part of my tooth fell out on a sunday. Now there is a hole in the tooth and new
little pieces keep falling out.



I just hope it can hold off until tomorrow before it really falls apart because no dentist seems to be open today. You can see from the picture that not much of the tooth is real. Most of it is the white filling. I had all my amalgam metal fillings taken out and replaced with the white ones in 1997 in Canada. They said it had a 5-10 year life span so I guess I am about to have a dental emergency considering I had 12 fillings replaced at that time. Maybe I should have just kept the freakin metal ones but I couldn't get over the idea of mercury getting into my body.



It's all my fault for the amount of candy I ate as a child. Like I used to (pre-stomach thing) eat a lot of candy as an adult - but it was way worse as a child.