You are in My World Now

You are here: Home / Archives for Health Fitness + Beauty / Crohns Disease

One health crisis after another

by

This has been a busy week for me. I’ve had two doctors appointments, one medical test and a ton of computer work to do! I’m glad the week is almost over.

I guess it doesn’t help that I’m not feeling well. (As usual). My Crohn’s is just in a constant flare and my back … well that’s another story … it had been feeling a lot better over the last few weeks, but I must have done something to it yesterday morning before walking to one of my doctors appointments and the next thing I know my lower back is spasming and aching. It’s still acting up, but not as bad as yesterday.

For some reason my pain doctor weighs me every time I see her (usually once a month). I hate it, but for the first time in a while I got some god news when she did her weigh in – I’d lost 8 pounds since my last visit! Yeah! Maybe I’ll be back in fighting form by early summer. Yeah! I even ran into a nurse that I worked with in the ER and she asked me if I’d found a diet pill that works. LOL Nope – just eating healthy (as per normal) and trying to be a little more active. It’s probably the slight increase in activity that helped.

Of course I could be losing weight due to the Crohn’s disease. I once lost something like 35 pounds in one month and it was at a time when I didn’t need to lose an ounce! I could have also lost a few pounds because of my thyroid … I only have half my thyroid due to a precancerous tumor that I had removed – oh … 20 years ago, but the other day I noticed that the right side of my neck, where the remaining half of my thyroid is seems to be slightly swollen so when I went to see the doctor yesterday I asked her to take a look at my neck. She thought it was a little puffy too and sent me for an ultrasound.

The talkative ultrasound tech let me know that my remaining thyroid tissue has several nodules in it and that’s a kick in the ass ’cause I take synthetic thyroid replacement medicine and that’s supposed to help keep a tumor or nodules from reoccurring. So .. I’ve got new nodules in there … so now i might be looking at more precancerous or cancer growths and I might end up having to have surgery to have the rest of my thyroid removed. Fantastic. NOT.

It just seems that it’s once thing after another with my health this year- the constant Crohn’s flares, a slipped disc in my back and now growths in my thyroid that might mean I’ll have to have surgery. What else might happen?





Poked and prodded

by

Today turned out to be busy!

My husband usually has Mondays off and works the rest of the week, but he did someone a favor and traded shifts so he worked on Monday and had today off instead. Good timing on the switch as I had a doctors appointment in the afternoon and if I had taken the subway as I’d planned to do it would have taken me well over an hour to get there. Instead it only took about 15 minutes by car!

I’ve been seeing my family doctor and other doctors fairly regularly because my Crohn’s just won’t settle down … plus I had to go in today to get another shot of Depro Provera. No I’m not using it as birth control – even though that is how it’s working on my system … we’re trying it out to see if takes care of my endometriosis. I’ve been on it for almost a year now and since I don’t get my period while I’m on it I’ll have to say it helped because now I don’t have those horrible horrible period pains that were almost making me pass out in pain prior to my starting Depro Provera.

The only bad side-effect is that it’s caused me to gain at least 10 additional pounds … since I have Crohns that’s not too bad (Crohn’s tends to make you lose weight!), but still … I don’t like the extra weight – not at all. Hmmm maybe I should try some Solo Slim ?

I’ve also been having a lot of trouble with my back lately. I’d say it’s been hurting more and more for over a year – especially if I walk a few blocks or do house cleaning like sweeping or vacuuming. I think it’s because I tend to lean forward a little bit when I do those things. Anyway, my back goes into spasms that get worse and worse until i lie down and let my back muscles rest.

At the beginning of February – when my husband was in the hospital with a heart problem – I did a lot of walking back and forth to the hospital. I was carrying things back and forth as well. I think that did my back in … because sometime during those first few days of the month my left thigh went numb and now my whole left leg is pretty numb. I have Vitamin D deficiency too so that might be affecting the bones in my back.

So in addition to seeing the doctor today we also made a trip to the hospitals x-ray department and had my lower back x-rayed.

Then it was off to a drug store to pick up some digestive enzymes. Since my bowels are inflamed due to the Crohn’s disease it’s causing me not to digest some of the foods I eat very well. I also don’t digest some of the pills I have to take each day either … so I’m going to try taking digestive enzymes for a while and see if helps at all.

Finally after being out for about four hours we arrived back home. I didn’t get to rest my sore back though … my husband wanted me to edit one of his posts and he always seems to have trouble resizing photos and then adding them to his blog. I’ve even written out directions but he seems to always need my help. Arghhhh! It’s not that hard – right?

I think I”m just going to relax for the rest of the evening. God knows I need to recover from being poked and prodded all day! LOL But first – dinner! I made a roast yesterday so we’re going to have leftovers … easy!

Not a great day

by

I’m nervous about Chris going back to work tomorrow. He’s seemed pretty good since he’s been home from the hospital – only occasionally complaining that he has a funny feeling in his chest or that his lungs feel weird … but the true test will be once he goes back to work. We’ve had so many bad times with his as yet undiagnosed heart problem that I guess it’s natural to worry.

I think the added stress of his illness hasn’t done me any good. My Crohn’s is acting up or else I’ve got a bug. I was up half the night with terrible stomach cramps and pain and it hasn’t been much better throughout the day. Plus my back is bad and I seemed to have hurt my left wrist somehow. Geez, I guess this isn’t the time for either Chris nor I to look into a term life quote! Better to wait until we’re both feeling better I think.

Plus, we’ve been taping shows that are on this evening on our PVR. We had been watching a long movie, but once it was done we started to watch the episode of House that we’d taped only to find that it’s a rerun due to the Presidential address … what Presidential address? It wasn’t listed on our TV’s guide at all. Grrr … so several of the shows we taped tonight are messed up and I had to find them playing later in the evening and retape them. Grrrr.

I guess I’m just grumpy today. I don’t feel well and I can’t even watch the TV show that I wanted to watch.

Natural remedies and supplements for Crohns?

by

It’s kind of funny. Whenever I write about my Crohn’s disease and the awful symptoms it causes me I get all kinds of advice and helpful tips from my readers. it’s nice in a way, but I’ve tried just about everything that I think is medically safe – from dozens of medications prescribed by my doctors to natural remedies that I don’t think will do any harm like Cat’s Claw, probiotics and so on.

Most of the suggestions that I get have merit, but there’s always someone that suggests diet pills (why i don’t know) or some kind of multivitamin super supplement like Lipovox. Things like that might help other disorders, but I’m not sure they’d help bowel inflammation.

One of the suggestions I receive recently was Aloe Vera pills. I might try those as others with Crohn’s have found it to relieve their symptoms to some degree. It’s worth a try and shouldn’t do any harm.

When you are sick or if you have a chronic disease have you tried natural remedies or non traditional medicines?

When will this Crohn’s flare end?

by

My Crohn’s disease will just not settle down. My abdomen never feels good – at least not in the last three years or so, but I generally don’t have a really really bad spell that lasts two or three weeks continuously, which is exactly what’s happening to me now.

I’ve got more fevers each day than usual – high fevers too, plus abdominal cramps, pain in my right side and well lets just say that there’s little chance that I’d need to use a colon cleanse now or likely any time in the near future thanks to one of this terrible diseases nasty symptoms.

I wonder if the change in the weather has anything to do with my Crohn’s symptoms worsening? I always seem to have worse Crohn’s flares in the Autumn and Spring, but they can occur any time of year, it’s just the fall and spring flares seem to be worse.

Does anyone else with Crohn’s or another Autoimmune disease feel worse at a particular time of year, every year?

Meta

Pages

Connect with Us