Awareness Week 2017

December 1st thru 7th is Crohns and Colitis Awareness Week.  Crohns and Colitis Awareness Week was created by US Senate Resolution 199 in 2011.  Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis are two inflammatory bowel diseases that attack the digestive system.  Crohn's disease can impact anywhere along the digestive tract from mouth to anus, and UC impacts the large intestine.  Additionally, in many patients, IBD affects joins, skin, bones, kidneys, liver and eyes.  These are auto-immune disorders - basically the body decides to attack healthy tissues.

I have Ulcerative Colitis.  But I might have Crohn's Disease.  We're really not sure.  I've had some fancy expensive test that is supposed to tell you which you have, and it said UC, but the test is still experimental, so even those results are inconclusive.  I've had some erosion in my small intestine, which would be indicative of Crohn's.   My latest incident with the abscess also points itself towards Crohn's Disease.  Either way, I have Inflammatory Bowel Disease, and my treatment wouldn't change too much with a different diagnosis, so we haven't worried too much about what we call it.

In the last year, I have had a lot of extra-intestinal issues all connected to my UC.  I suffered from drug-induced lupus, a kidney infection, severe muscular problems in my back, a severe flare of uveitis, and a huge rectal abscess that led to my first IBD related surgery and a three day stay in the hospital.

Here's an infographic about my IBD.  I liked the one on the UK website better than the US one hahaaaa.

It's been a month since my surgery.  I'm not really in the mood to talk about living with UC during awareness week.  I've been sharing a lot more than usual because of the issues I've been having lately.  And people for the most part are pretty nice about it.  But there's so much more I wish I could share, that I wish I could say.  I've thought about making an anonymous twitter account, so that I can share all the gory details...because  sometimes you need to share the nitty gritty gross details.  I think it's important that people know that this disease is horrible and embarrassing and demeaning at times and I'm thankful for my friends who let me tell them those details!

I've been obsessed with Selena Gomez and her story lately.  As someone who suffered from lupus for much of the past year...I love the fact that she's willing to talk about it.  That she's able to say "yeah, I almost died" because of this is great and empowering.  I like that better than the commercials with celebrities such as an NFL player with IBD in them...because sometimes people see those commercials and they think "ok, yeah, it's a disease, but you can have it and play professional football and be fine".  For most of this year, I couldn't run to cross the street, let alone across a football field....I'd give anything just to be healthy enough for a nice bike ride.  But a life with an autoimmune disease is not always rainbows and sunshine and sometimes it just really sucks.

I go back to the eye doctor and to the surgeon this week to follow up and see how things are healing on both ends of my body.  Next week, I have some more bloodwork done, and then follow up with the rheumatologist.  So many doctors appointments.  2017 is going to be remembered as the year of the doctors appointments.  Blah.