Frustration

The first several of these posts are going to probably be just about my ulcerative colitis and my past experiences and my current plans, trials and tribulations. This is just to get it all out in the open and out there, but then I’ll get on to other topics.

Today was a very frustrating day for me. I’ve been working for a long time to get my body back into shape after “contracting” ulcerative colitis many years ago. But for the last many years I have had flare ups, which I have calmed down and then gone about my way without really HANDLING this colitis so that it was fully under control and wouldn’t come back and really disrupt my life. There was the illusion that I was being responsible for the condition. I ate pretty well, not much sugar or junk, but I didn’t really go for the gold of really getting it handled.

Well, for the last two years, I have been having a hard time. I have been pushing through a major flare up that hasn’t really calmed down. I haven’t slept more than a couple hours in a row more than a handful of the time. My wife had a really rough pregnancy and I had to be there for her. I am the main income of our family so I’ve pushed and pushed to keep working. And then my daughter was born in March–one of the coolest things to ever happen to me. But it was downhill for me. I had pushed too hard for too long. I was having a really hard time being a dad, husband, or even much of an individual.

Well, finally after enough complaining, my wife told me to just take some time off and get better. At that time I thought it would just take some sleep and rest and I would be able to recouperate. Boy was I wrong. I didn’t realize how far down I had gotten in the last two years (and now that I have really started to look at it, how far I had pushed it previously). I had basically run the body out of iron (which the blood needs to be able to transport oxygen). I’m still working to get that up after a couple of months IV vitamin/mineral/amino acid supplementation, oral iron supplementation and iron injections. And that has had whatever other results since the body has had to operate without enough oxygen and nutrients for so long.

Anyway, that’s a bit of history just to catch you up. But on the the frustration. I’ve been doing better recently, but then got some kind of bug. It really wiped me out and even though I am now mostly over it, I’m still not back up to the state that I was just last week. And that’s what’s frustrating. Just a small bug has wiped me out. I know it won’t be that hard to get back to where I was, but it’s just hard that I’m not very resilient after so much money and work has been put into putting me back together.

Luckily, I have a really good naturopath now that is really trying to work with me to get me back together and to help me do it within a reasonable budget since we’re not rich and I’m not able to work a bunch extra to help cover the costs. She’s actually going to work with me to get hooked up to some doctors at OHSU that my insurance should cover (my health insurance doesn’t cover naturopath doctors) to help make sure that we aren’t “leaving any stone un-turned”.

Basically, to sum it up, I would really love it if there was a clear cut “this disease is caused by X and you do Y and you’ll be better in no time”. It would be really nice. Even if the Y was long and expensive, I would know that it would be over with. Now we’re just working towards improvement with the hope that at the end it will all be under control (and I don’t plan to give up until it is fully under control) so there’s the variable of what it will take and how long it will take and how much it will cost.

Ok, I’m done being down about this and am ready to get back on the path to wellness. These bumps are annoying, but at least they are short lived and then it’s back onto the progress upwards.


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