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Getting extra exercise this week

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I can’t believe all the snow we’re getting. Apparently, we’re getting enough snow this week to equal half the amount we normally get all winter. Last year we had a lot more snow than we normally get in Toronto too. It kind of makes it hard to believe we’re experiencing Global Warming when our city, that normally has a light snow fall that melts within a day or two of falling, is now getting snow that lasts the whole winter. In large quantities.

Well at least this week there’s no need to take diet pills or even go to work out in a gym as we’re getting enough exercise shoveling and pushing snow around. Even walking in the stuff must burn extra calories as it’s much harder to walk over an un-shoveled sidewalk than it is to walk over a snow free one!

It’s also been terribly cold here this week. -20 Celsius (-4 F) with the windchill! I’m sure that’s bound to increase the metabolism as we struggle to stay warm when we’re taking our dog for a walk or shoveling, shoveling, shoveling.

How’s your first day of winter going?





Natural remedies and supplements for Crohns?

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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?

Visiting a very stressed out friend

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Chris and I just came back from the hospital. One of our friends is going to have open heart surgery tomorrow afternoon.

Both our friend and her husband are totally freaked out and upset that everything they had to do in the hospital today took so long. They basically spent the whole day waiting to see the nurse practitioner, the anesthesiologist, the surgeon and so on. In fact she still hadn’t seen the surgeon by the time we left at 8:45 pm!

I’d be stressed to if I were having surgery on my heart tomorrow too, so I can understand, but still, being an ER nurse I can also understand how hospitals work, that’s why she had to go in a day early, right?

Her husband is really stressed too. Not only does he have to deal with his wife having open heart surgery, but his best friend (also our friend) is anther hospital dying of Pancreatic cancer. Major stress!

Not only that .. but amid all of these troubles he’s been looking for jobs in business management. Yes, all these things going on and he’s unemployed too!

I just hope our friend doesn’t have any complications from the surgery. She’s been told that she’ll be able to return home seven days after the surgery … so that’s good, as long as things go well.

I expect we’ll be spending a lot of time at the hospital over the weekend!

When will this Crohn’s flare end?

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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?

I can finally start walking my dog again!

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I’ve been starting wonder if I’m still a blogger. It sure doesn’t seem like it lately. I have a number of blogs and so far this month I’ve written very few posts in each of the blogs. Well … I can blame it on my Crohn’s disease this time. I’ve been very sick for most of this month, and I just haven’t really felt up to writing.

Hopefully I’ll get back in gear soon and start posting at my usual rate.

I’ve had one positive area this month. I can finally walk my dog. Well … I’m not feeling that great, so the walks from me are hit and miss, but it’s progress.

Midnight is only a year old, but she’s so strong! She’s a Lab and she’s really hyper outside, especially if we encounter other people or people walking dogs. Tug, tug, pull pull … I don’t know how many times she’s almost pulled Chris or I off are feet and there’s been a few times when she has actually made us fall.

We finally gave in last Monday. We went to PetSmart to look for a new harness for her. We’d been using the Comfort Wrap harness since June and it helped, but obviously she was still pulling much too hard on our walks. She’d also started to outgrow her current harness so we were trying to get her a larger one.

When we didn’t find a larger harness (she was already wearing a large) we decided to talk with one of the PetSmart clerks. The person who helped us was a very small woman, maybe 5 feet tall if that. She told us that the only way she could walk her big dog (species unknown sorry) was with a prong collar. She said it made a huge difference.

Neither Chris nor I were all that big on trying a prong collar, but we decided to try one out while we were in the store so she found one that would fit Midnight- even taking out two prongs so it would fit better and we proceeded to walk around the store with Midnight.

It was like Night and Day! What a huge difference. Suddenly we were in control. Midnight wasn’t pulling. We walked around and she tried to pull towards some people and other dogs and she wasn’t able to drag us where she wanted to go. She also didn’t jump at people as much either. There was absolutely no sign that the prong collar hurt her so we decided to buy the collar and try it out at home.

That evening Chris and I both took her for a walk and marveled out how nice it was to walk without constantly telling Midnight to walk nice, and not saying “no pull” all the time. In fact, we must have said “good girl” and “good walk” twenty or thirty times on that first walk with the new collar. No more coming home frustrated and sometimes in pain from being dragged along on a walk, and Midnight must have liked being told she was good so many times instead of hearing the frustration and sometimes anger in our voices that usually occurred on walks prior to getting the prong collar.

The next day I took Midnight out for two walks! That was the first time I’d walked her on my own in ages. She was just too strong for me, especially when I’m not feeling well. Don’t worry Chris has been walking her all along so she was getting two or three walks a day with him, but now she gets at least one and sometimes two with me.

The only time I noticed the prong collar hurting her was the other day when she tried to run up to another dog to greet it. She was super excited and just charged at the dog in glee. Unfortunately as she pulled on the leash the collar must have tightened and pinched her skin because she did make a few sounds like she was in pain, but that’s the only sign that the collar hurt her, so if we can try to control her better when she gets really excited around other dogs that shouldn’t happen again.

Have you ever tried a prong collar on your dog? Did it work? Did it ever end up hurting your dog?

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