In a world where medical professionals have only a few minutes to go over a whole slew of symptoms, medication interactions, and surgical complications, it is impossible to cover the psychosocial aspects of one’s condition(s). These aspects include methods of coping with the emotional roller coaster of living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).This is where support groups come into the picture. They fill that gap between doctor-patient interactions and provide real-time support and understanding to patients caught in the rigmarole of hospital visits, health insurance, and invasive testing. But more than this, the true value of support groups lies in empowering patients by fostering lifelong friendships through a deep understanding of…
- acceptance, advocacy, awareness, Colorectal Surgery, coping with flare, Crohn's, living with IBD, Ostomy, patient rights, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis
- acceptance, awareness, Colorectal Surgery, coping with flare, Crohn's, living with IBD, Ostomy, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis
Metamorphosis
This past weekend marked 3 years since my series of surgeries at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. That trial was my greatest test to date. 3 surgeries back to back to clean out remnants of j-pouch, rectum and anal sphincter that left behind a wound the size of a small football. From daunting saltwater whirlpools, Jackson-Pratt drains, Hydrogen Peroxide flushes into my pelvis, a wound VAC and procedures under sedation every other day to clean out the wound. I was on 6 different painkillers and I was barely hanging on for life. In the months prior, I had drains galore, one from my back down my leg with a bag…
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The Waiting Game
Does nail-biting anxiety wash over you as you await results after a colonoscopy, MRI, or CT scan? Or restlessness while waiting for your latest round of biologics to start kicking in? Yeah, me too. I sit here today twiddling my thumbs endlessly as I await my ileoscopy and upper endoscopy biopsies from last week. This form of anxiety is all part of the waiting game. We patients live in constant agony while test results are pending, especially when a definitive diagnosis depends on those results. We worry as we take dose after dose of the latest round of immunosuppressants, earnestly hoping that this medication will be “it” — remission, finally. These feelings…
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Tear Up Your Flare-Up
Whether it feels like a bus just squashed us flat or we have that sudden urge to defecate with no end in sight, we all know that feeling when a flare is imminent. And while it is no fun, it is a part of living and breathing with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). So how do we manage flares? And more importantly, how do we to cope with them to live the fullest life possible? We all know flare-ups are unapologetically anxiety-producing. But staying in those thoughts may cause us to flounder. Overanalyzing and blaming ourselves for a flare, or even for our diseases, is unfair, unreasonable, and counterproductive. IBD has…