A Day in the Life of a Crohnie

I woke up earlier than I meant to because of pain. I had to use the bathroom, again.

Even though I had my Remicade relatively recently, my Crohn’s has been acting up. A month of stress followed by a bad scare where I couldn’t medicate in response meant that even though I had had my meds, I was still pretty delicate. Combine that with working hard, and my body is making itself heard that it’s unhappy.

I did what I could to clean the balcony, before collapsing in the chair.  It was not even noon yet, and already I was exhausted. If I wanted to eat, I needed to take my meds. Until then, the nausea made any thoughts of food more than unpleasant.

Taking my meds is now laced with anxiety. Thanks to my upstairs neighbour, every time I decide to take it I am worried I will get another visit from the cops. The anxiety of course just aggravates my conditions and means that it takes more meds just to make the pain go away. Forget about anything more than that.

Lunch is a box of rice with some ground beef. Something simple and relatively delicate, and still it ends up being too much for me.

The next hour is painful. I can’t take more pain medication since I need to drive Alyssa somewhere, so instead I wait, and try to distract myself with Facebook. Finally, I ask her if I can drive her early so I can get home sooner. She agrees, and I can focus on something else for a few minutes.

As the weather shifts, my joints decide to join the party. My spine plays pop-goes the weasel as I shift around my chair, trying to find a less painful position to sit in. With the pain in both my back and my intestines, it is hard to tell which hurts worse. Back home, I smoke another marijuana cigarette, but it’s not enough, so I roll another. In between I try to distract myself with Facebook, wishing I had the energy to work on a story idea I have, let alone work on the blog network I’ve been trying to get funded.

By the time I manage to make enough pain to go away, it’s almost dinner time and I have to think of what to make. I can’t handle much and I know it. The leftover Pho I have sounds like a good idea. I should add some kind of meat, but when I start looking through the freezer my already inflamed skin just can’t take the cold. I’ve been spending more time in the sun, trying to make sure that next winter my depression doesn’t get as bad as this year. I don’t have a sunburn, but like many people with autoimmune disorders, I have sun allergic skin. It doesn’t happen every time, but often going outside can mean that I get hives or that my skin simply starts to feel full of pins and needles. Ironically, if I had a lounge chair, I could lay down and expose my back to the sun. While my skin might not like the sun, the patch of psoriasis hates it more. Sometimes sunlight can help make the patch go away.

I decided that broth and noodles is probably better for me given my sensitive stomach. Turns out even that’s too much.

I am in pain again. I look at my marijuana order from this month and worry. I cannot afford to buy more even if I hadn’t bought my full prescription this month.

It’s a bad day, but not the worst I’ve had by any stretch. I’m nauseated and coughing, but I haven’t yet been throwing up. My bathroom trips are painful, but not as frequent as they could be, and my level of exhaustion doesn’t exceed the usual. I can still stay awake, though naps are tempting. I need a sweater to deal with the cold though, even though it is still warmer than it’s been the last few months. I hope that with enough medication I can cut down this flare before I end up in the hospital, but it wouldn’t be the first time I wasn’t able. I hope not though. I really don’t want to end up on prednisone again.

Taking more medicine means that my mouth is constantly dry. My stomach can’t handle juice right now, and an unfortunate association with being badly ill makes nausea and water not a good mix. I’ve been guzzling pop as a result, just trying to make my tongue feel less like resin covered sandpaper. I’m hoping I can handle some tea.

Update 1: Not ten minutes after posting this, I started throwing up. And so it goes.


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A Day in the Life of a Crohnie
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6 thoughts on “A Day in the Life of a Crohnie

  1. 1

    You should think about going to your apartment management office and explaining about your marijuana prescription, the neighbor’s complaint and the police call-out. Get them to issue a memo to your neighbors explaining it is medically prescribed marijuana, of which the police are aware, and that filing a false police report is in itself a crime. Perhaps that will convince your neighbor to behave. You shouldn’t be made to be afraid to take your own pain medication.

    1. 1.1

      The management office is on my side, and actually the cops were pretty chill too. They showed up at my door nothing more, and I do have a legal prescription and none of the neighbours on my floor can smell it. I can’t stop her from calling the cops though if she wants to except eventually if she does it enough, I might have a case for harassment. Rather the issue is that now I worry about whether this time she will call them.

      Regardless of whether or not I get in trouble, just having them show up is stressful.

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