Elephant in the Room

Where have I been and what have I been doing?

I try to come here and blog about everyday things or fun things or silly things we do, but that's the question that haunts me so I don't post. I stay silent. So I thought perhaps that the truth would set me free.

After my grandmother died, I got really sick. I was running to the bathroom day and night, seeing blood. (At the risk of being graphic, sorry). I told myself it was stress, I told myself it was an infection. I must have caught something yucky from work. So, I went to my physician and told him what was going on. He ordered tests. I did not have a parasite or bad bacteria. I did have an elevated sed rate (means nonspecific inflammation). I do have a family history of inflammatory bowel disease. That combined with the lab test and my symptoms bought me a colonoscopy.

I told myself that the colonoscopy would be normal, and whatever it was would go away. I woke up from the colonoscopy to my physician telling me I had redness in various places throughout my lower GI tract. It was not, in fact, normal. The biopsies were nonspecific (read, no help.) So my physician sat me down and said that the evidence was pointing strongly to Crohn's disease.

At that point I freaked out. Went into complete and total denial. Lost my mind a little. I turned down medication because I didn't have that illness. I just couldn't. I'd spent my adult life studying IBD to help others, how on earth could this have happened to me?

I spent the next 6 months in a self imposed hell. I developed arthritis, worst in my lower back and wrists (I'm 35). I had bad abdominal pain, and I never stopped running to the bathroom. I told myself I was just stressed. I needed to deal with my mental state, eat well, rest or something. I told myself if I could just pull myself together, things would get better. They didn't. Perhaps this explains why so very little scrapping has been happening on this blog. It's nothing short of a miracle that I completed my Cocoa Daisy assignments on time every month, and that I managed to go to work and take care of my 4 yr old while my husband was deployed.

After being up all night going to the bathroom one night, half delirious, I decided I'd had enough. I didn't care what we called it, I just wanted it to stop. So I spoke to my physician who told me to just give the Pentasa a try. Having no expectations, or even hope that it would work, I debated for 2 days about taking it. When I did try it, within 24 hours I had no back/abd pain. Within 48 hrs, no diarrhea. And within 72 hrs, the arthritis was gone.

I feel some days like Alice and wonderland. Take the big blue pill Alice and we can pretend that the past year never happened. I'm normal again, except that I take blue pills at every meal. The only thing these pills treat is Crohn's, but most days I still try not to think about that. What can I say, denial is strong emotion. It overrides rational thought. I think it's a self defense mechanism from things that threaten the very core of who we are/what we know. I have some way to go before acceptance, but feeling better is helping.

So, that's where I've been. I want to get back into scrapping because I feel more strongly than ever that I have stories to tell, things to say to the people I love. But it's hard, I'm out of practice and really need to develop some consistent habits again. With each day I get a little stronger and I know I'll be loving paper again soon (I already am in love with the CD Aug kit, omgosh). Thank you to anyone who commented on a page in a gallery somewhere, or on this blog. Your comments have lifted me up and helped me keep crafting when I wanted to give up, so thank you.

Now can we just move on? :) Happy weekend to you (and thanks for reading.) Until tomorrow.