Inflammatory bowel disease

Crohn’s sucks

January 17, 2007 by Tricia

Just checking in.

I rested as much as I possibly could from Friday up until Monday, took all of my pain medications properly and I’m still in pain.

I give up. There doesn’t seem to be anything that I can do to make this Crohn’s attack stop.

In the last two and a half years I’ve done everything from watching every single thing I eat – and of course I still have to because there are things that I just can’t eat at all as they cause me pain and digestive problems. I’ve tried only having clear fluids – water, broth, jello, and flat ginger ale and then when I moved to solid foods I’ve tried only eating soft fairly bland foods – rice, chicken, apple sauce, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs and things like that. I’ve actually eaten fairly soft mild food items for most of the last two years because I can’t eat a lot of veggies- especially raw, or fruit as I just don’t tolerate them well at all.

I’ve been on meds for my crohns – a combination of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and now I’m off all of those too. I had to stop the antibiotics in 2005 because I developed a reaction to them. the combo of antibiotics and Pentasa (the anti-inflammatory for the bowel) made me feel the best, but once I stopped the flagyl I started getting worse again. Now I’m off the Pentasa because my G.I. doc wasn’t sure that they were working, plus being off them might make it easier for the camera pill that I’m going to swallow next week to see whatever happens to be going on in there now.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t sleep because of the pain but I tried my best for almost four days to sleep as much as possible. I think it helped a bit but not enough.

This is the most frustrating disorder. I hate Crohn’s. I hate it!

Every week, or dare I say ever day, since I stopped the Pentasa has been worse than the one before. I can deal with almost all of the symptoms. The one that bothers me the most and is a constant is the pain. If the pain would just stop I’d feel so much better.

Trying to be a good sickie

January 14, 2007 by Tricia

On Friday I wrote and said I might take a break.

I’ve been posting on all my sites at a crazy pace since October when I started with Pay/perp0st. I need to do that because I’ve been off work due to my Crohn’s disease since December 2005. I have no money coming in.

Well I didn’t really, until I came across pay/perp0st, and a few other companies that pay me to write posts for them. I also added text-link-ads to my sites, and Google Adsense to my new sites (I’d had Adsense and Amazon on my two established websites for years prior to this).

Finally I was making some money and it felt good.

Trouble was .. I’m at home sick for a reason. I’m too sick to work at my job as a nurse where I stand on my feet for my whole 12 hour shift and often run around like a chicken with my head cut off. I guess I thought posting sometimes as many as 20 posts a day on all my sites combined wouldn’t be as hard on me.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been if I wasn’t doing it 7 days a week. You know … if I actually gave myself a day off every now and then?

I haven’t been though and I think I’m really paying for it now.

In mid-December I saw my gastrointernologist and he took me off my Crohn’s meds (not the pain killers although he’s not thrilled with those) to prepare for the camera endoscopy that I’m going to have on the 24th of this month. I get to go totally digital and swallow a camera pill. Oh Joy!

Yeah- no anti-inflammatory meds for some with an inflamed bowel. Not a good situation. Crohn’s doesn’t only affect the bowel. It can affect the joints and eyes and a lot of other things too. Well .. today my knees are killing me too.

Complain, complain, complain.

Actually I’m writing this to tell you that for the most part I was a good sickie yesterday. For the first time I took my pain meds properly.

I have one heavy duty pain killer (morphine if you’d like to know) that is time released over 12 hours. When my pain doctor first started me on them she suggested that I take it in the evening since that’s when I have most of my pain, and if it worked maybe my pain levels would be low enough that I could go to sleep at a decent time. I was also being prescribed a pain killer called Tramacet as well – it’s kind of like Tylenol #3’s but it has a synthetic morphine derivative in it rather than codeine since I’m allergic to codeine.

For a little while I was going to bed by maybe 2 a.m. but my messed up sleep and pain cycle continued, and before long I was up all night again. Part of the reason for that is that I don’t digest things well and uhm … that pill that was supposed to do me so much good wasn’t being absorbed by my system. Don’t ask me to explain how I know that- use your imagination if you must.

So when I told the doctor that the pill was passing through me sometimes as often as three times a week she started me on a Fentanyl patch as well. That’s a patch that delivers yet another painkiller 24 hours a day through my skin. That helped a bit. Oh and I also have percocet to take for break through pain as well.

Even with all those heavy duty meds – 4 different types, I was still in terrible pain. Abdominal pain is very hard to manage obviously. At least when your body doesn’t co-operate and actually digest the medicine. So, she instructed me to take the morphine pill twice a day.

I really didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t up until yesterday.

Yep. Yesterday when I got up I took the medicine that I normally only allowed myself to take at night. I then lazed around in bed reading a novel for a couple of hours. When I got up again I was in pain but no where near as much as I’ve been in all week.

The pain increased as it usually does in the evening once I’d gotten a couple of meals into my system. Even though I had pain it was still less than it’s been most of this past week. So I followed my usual pattern of taking a couple of Tramacet, and once I hit the 12 hour mark from the time I’d taken the morphine pill earlier that day, I took another. Just as my pill bottle has instructed me to do for the last 4 or 5 months, but which I’d never done before.

Unfortunately I’m still in pain. It’s the middle of the night – or rather it’s early Sunday morning. You’d think I’d be asleep having increased my meds but it doesn’t seem to work that way with me. Maybe if I took my medications as should more often I’d start to feel better.

I know I’ve mentioned a lot of heavy duty pain pills here, oh and the patch too. I don’t take any of the medicine as prescribed though. Ok, I can’t alter the patch so I do take that one properly. I’m allowed to take two Tramacet at a time, but I usually only take one at a time. The percocet? I take that two or three times a week, but I often only take half a pill because it hits me too hard and makes me nauseated. The morphine pill I can take twice a day and up until yesterday I only ever took one a day.

Guess I am the perfect person to be writing the Watching House blog eh? I understand his pain – but I don’t pop pills quite like he does!

Anyway, I think I’ll continue my experiment today and take my morphine pill when I’m due for another one. Maybe if I can get on top of this pain by treating it aggressively for a few days I’ll begin to feel a bit better.

I’m not sure yet whether I’ll write any extra posts today for pay/perp0st. It would be nice to just try to sleep and relax. That is what I should do, but I might be compelled to write a post or two if a good paying opportunity comes up. I’m going to try not to though.

Oh just to show you an example of how much my posting has increased just on this blog alone (add in As the garden Grows and Celebrity scoop with similar posting totals to see what I’ve really been up to, plus my photoblog with at least 5 posts a week) :

# January 2007 (49)
# December 2006 (126)
# November 2006 (143)
# October 2006 (120)
# September 2006 (32)
# August 2006 (26)
# July 2006 (31)

You can see that I was writing almost daily before October, then once October and my earning discovery came along my posting quadrupled!

No wonder I’m not getting any better.

Might take a break

January 12, 2007 by Tricia

I’m still feeling totally awful. I can’t believe it. I’ve gotten into a bad sleep cycle and I’m sleeping during the day because my pain is keeping me up at night. I’m sure that this isn’t helping at all.

I feel so dragged out and I’ve got a pain in my abdomen that’s been relentless for the last three days or so. It’s a cross between a fist and a knife jabbing my right side.

I feel exhausted but I can’t sleep. I mentioned in an earlier post that maybe I could help myself get better if I just knocked myself out for a few days. That idea has become more and more appealing.

I think I might just do the bare minimum of blogging over the next few days, so if you don’t hear from me after you’ve written to me with a question please don’t think I’m ignoring you. I just need to try to rest and to try to feel better.

karaoke Neighbors

January 1, 2007 by Tricia

Enough about Sofie my little old lady stalker neighbor … this time I wanna talk about my gawd awful Karaoke singing neighbors!

They Are Driving Me Nuts!

Friday, beginning sometime around three p.m. I began to hear what possible might have been country music through the walls of my home. The sound was coming from the adjoined neighboring house … the Karaoke neighbors. The music was accompanied by what can only be described as the sound of wailing dogs left out in the cold and howling to get in. Yes, they were singing.

OH my Gawd, they were singing?!?!

They continued on through the evening, at least until 11:00 pm. It was unbearable! The music changed but unfortunately if anything the singing was worse. We’ve been through this before. They were probably partying and drinking. The music gets louder and louder through the night- probably thanks to an unhealthy dose of alcohol, and unfortunately the singing only gets worse.

People, no matter what they believe, do not sing better when they’ve been drinking.

That was Friday ….

This is now early Monday morning.

They took Saturday off.

Unfortunately, they did not take Sunday off.

I was sick all day Saturday. Actually it started Friday night. I’m only guessing that their music stopped at 11 pm Friday because I fell asleep on the couch to escape my pain and perhaps them as well. Saturday was not a good day for me – fevers and pain in my belly all day. I took it easy because I wanted to go with my husband to see his brother and the rest of his family for New Years Eve. I didn’t make it though. I felt a bit better on Sunday but not enough to be able to go out and party all night.

So I’m home. Spent the afternoon and a good portion of the evening working on my sites. I actually felt like I got something accomplished without Chris hovering around me.

At about 8:30 pm the horrid Karaoke began again. It was sporadic, but very very loud. I didn’t want to go and knock on their door because I’m feeling yucky and look horrible. Wait a minute that might have actually helped!

Instead I spent my time yelling at the walls. Yeah … I’m hoarse now from yelling at them to shut up – not from screaming as the year changed. What a twit huh?

If you are picturing a woman, no make up, dressed in sweats and looking ill, holding her hands cupped around her mouth and yelling loudly at a wall while stomping her feet, well yeah, that’s me you’re seeing. Now forget you ever saw that, and we won’t speak of it again.

Their house quieted down sometime after 10. I thought I’d lucked out and that maybe they went to a friends. They must have gone somewhere, but not for long because around 11:30 I started hearing a lot of loud voices and thumping feet over there, and the sound of microphones being dropped – you know that bang and hiss they make when they fall and their turned on and the sound comes out the speakers. Yeah. Not nice.

Right after midnight the Howling music began. I swear it sounds like they are in some big empty warehouse. Their music and singing almost echoes. I can’t make out the words to their songs but they sing so bad I doubt I could if I was in the same room.

Christmas Eve was like this too, but if anything their awful music and singing was better than it was Friday or today. I can’t believe they’ve managed to get worse through the week! My husband refused to complain about it last Sunday, no matter how much I plead with him to go over and knock on their door. He said it was Christmas Eve .. leave them alone. Yet he complained all week about how loud they’d been last Sunday. Yeah … whatever Chris.

Calling them doesn’t help. They can’t hear the phone. Heck I can’t hear my phone at times since it sounds like they are in MY living room. Knocking on the door doesn’t help much either. When we’ve complained in the past they tone it down for a bit, and look at us like there’s something wrong with us complaining about their music. They claim that they can’t hear us. Well, let me tell you – I can hear them. All __ The __ Time!

It’s actually just about 1 a.m. and if they don’t stop soon I’m going to go bust their door down. This is really inconsiderate. I am very angry at them right now – so angry in fact that I might even call the police. I’ve never done that to anyone before.

I know it’s New Years and I really don’t mind people having fun … I like to have fun too, but if you were here and you could hear how loud and how awful the sound is you’d be wanting to call the police too. It sounds like they are IN my living room. Going upstairs doesn’t help either because it’s almost as loud. Plus, this is the third time in a week that they’ve driven me nuts with their loud awful singing.

Once I can forgive, three times in a week, uh huh.

This time I will be complaining.

The real problem is that they are actually very nice people, and overall they are good neighbors to have. They don’t do this very often anymore. They used to all the time, I think our complaints and actually bringing them into our home to hear how loud they were helped a bit.

I’ve already told Chris that our next home will be DETACHED. No more semi-detached for me, thank you very much.

Hmmm now I’m done editing this post and it’s 1:10 am .. I heard noise at their front door and I think their guests might be leaving. The karaoke stopped about 10 minutes ago too. Keeping my fingers crossed that it’s over.

Haaaaappppy New Year!

January 1, 2007 by Tricia

It’s a new year, 2007 is here! I’m hoping this will be a good year for me. I soooo need to get better and get back to work! I’m also hoping that everyone else also has a great year too.

Did anyone make any resolutions?

The only one that I’ve made, but don’t have too much control over, is to get healthier this year. My crohn’s flare MUST die down. Actually it must DIE. LOL It would be wonderful if it would just go away. It’s been 2.5 years of ongoing pain. Flares don’t normally last that long. It’s time. Give me a break.

I hope that you’ve made resolutions that you can stick to. The little ones are easier to keep aren’t they?

Have a great year, and Happy New Year to all.

BTW I’m going to send out some linky love in a day or two. If you want to get in on the action read my proposal. It opens in a new tab.

Crohn’s sucks

Trying to be a good sickie

Might take a break

karaoke Neighbors

Haaaaappppy New Year!

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