Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Let's Talk About Shit




***WARNING non IBD people may want to change the channel, please tune into my shit free channel Sentimental Redo to see the same furniture flips without the shits! ***
 


"Let's Talk About Shit"

(Punch it, Hurb
Yo, I don't think we should talk about this
Come on, why not?
People might misunderstand what we're tryin' to say, you know?
No, but that's a part of life)

Come on

[CHORUS]

Let's talk about shit, baby
Let's talk about you and me
Let's talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be
Let's talk about shit
Let's talk about shit
Let's talk about shit
Let's talk about shit
.......
 
 
Guess what we're talking about today fellow Crohnies! You guessed it, we're talking about shit. :) Pease turn your radio onto the song "Let's talk about Sex" by Salt and Pepper and you can sing along with my new lyrics as you go through this post.
 
Today I'm having a Cappuccino day. Most old Crohnies will know what I'm talking about, but non Crohnies and maybe some new Crohnies might not have a clue. Now I'm going to cut to a conversation I had with my doctor a couple months ago.
 
DR: I need you to give me a sample today
ME: Sorry doc, not happening, had to take a ton of Imodium to get here today. I'm not pooing for a week.
DR: Maybe you could drink a coffee of something.
ME: Yea, that might work. I'll be back in 20 minutes.

Even though I hate having diarrhea all the time, I hate not having it just as much, maybe more. I have so much damage and narrowing of the colon that when things firm up it can be quite painful as it tries to go through. Also, and here's something that is maybe weird just for me, let me know if you have this problem, but I'm not used to having anything in my guts. It feels weird, and full, and uncomfortable. I don't think it's entirely from narrowing, and ulcerated areas. I really think after 10 years of constant diarrhea I'm just not used to having a full gut, so even the times it's not painful it's always uncomfortable.


So I got my cappuccino, my heating pad, my laptop, and I'm staying in my bed all horizontal like to keep the pressure off with my most favorite Christmas present of all time, my hospital table.



I was going to clean it off and dust it before I took the photo, but that wouldn't be real would it. That would be fantasy, magazine, internet, Martha Steward life. Not real life, definitely not my real life. I'm sick of chronically ill people feeling guilty about not having perfect homes! Guess what, even non ill people have messy homes. Our homes are where we live our lives, and life is messy. Stressing about not cleaning is going to make you worse, stop stressing and live your life the best you can, mess and all! Cleaning the table is not on my list of things to TRY and do today. Today I'm going to lay in bed, blog and drink coffee until I poo. When and if I feel better I'm going to bake a loaf of bread and paint a couple of chairs. I'm ok with the table staying dirty today. I'm ok with it staying dirty a lot of days. Sometimes I don't clean it until the pile on it gets big enough that it falls on the floor when I move it. Shhhh....

Hey, guess what, the coffee's working....

I really did want to share something useful today, other then my inability to poo. On to the useful information:

I entered a contest. It was scary. Not because I'm afraid of competing, but because I had to go on location for 6 hours and the restrooms were a bit of a walk to get to. 1st I'm going to tell you about the contest then I'm going to tell you how I Crohn's prepared for the contest.

I entered our local "FLIP" contest. Each team had to make three pieces for their booth. Each piece had to consist of at least 50% reused, vintage or 2nd hand materials. We had to make one item that reused pallets, one unique storage item, and one item for the man cave. We had a couple of weeks to make the items but we had to sell them ourselves during a our city's downtown market, which was open 8am - 1pm.

Man cave tailgate bench and a 'Go Jump In The Lake' pallet coffee table

The little county vanity that wanted to be a desk w/chalkboard mirror.
Guess what? We won!

So how did I manage my Crohn's? Here's what I did.

Mornings are my worst time of day and we had to be on location to set up at 7am. SCARRY! So I started the night before. I stopped eating after dinner around 5:30. I got up at 4am hoping the guts "turned on" early. I took Imodium at 5:30am to give it time to start working and hoped it would stop the guts for the rest of the day. I did NOT eat breakfast, I also didn't eat anything while I was there and had just enough water to keep from getting dehydrated.

Coffee's working again.....
Maybe the whole day won't be spent in bed after all



Me and Maddie. Notice my crazy short hair. You should have seen it when it was only 1" long! I had to cut it after the prednisone made over 1/2 of it fall out!!! The crazy Prednisone story is here. Now it's growing out and I have no idea what to do with it!

Me in the booth with all our stuff!


Each team had to have two people, my husband was my partner but he couldn't get the sale day off work so my daughter sat in the booth with me. No way would I have tried to do this myself, if I had a flare my booth would be empty and nothing would sell. I only ended up in the bathroom once, for a false alarm.... I don't fart unless my bottom is over a toilet..... I would rather be safe then sorry.

BTW this is how I used to work. No eating after dinner, no eating work hours which were 8-12 hours long 5-7 days a week. Up all night on the toilet from stuffing myself at dinner and getting no sleep. This is why I would drop to 100 pounds every summer and why I ended up in the hospital every fall. Its also why I don't work anymore. If I want to do something special once in a while this works for keeping things under control, but doing it everyday is way too hard on your body. According to my doctors doing this everyday could kill you. There's your warning and my disclosure.

DON'T DO THIS EVERY DAY OR YOU COULD DIE!

So stay safe little Crohnies,

Next time I'm going to tell you about my big trip, and my emergency Crohn's travel kit.

D.