Month: April 2017

Sleep Well – The Crohn’s Saga Part 29

Here’s something you may not know: you will never get more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep in the hospital. True, you will get plenty of rest, but it will come in bursts. Night time is a busy time. Nurses and technicians are always coming in to check your vitals (blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature), draw your blood, and give you medicine.

That said, night time in the hospital is something to be experienced. Seriously. Everything is so quiet yet so active. In those fleeting windows of time where no one is checking in on you, you are left to lie quietly in the dark with just your thoughts. Sometimes you hear commotion in other rooms. Sometimes you get air bubbles in your IV tube and the IV alarm goes off. Sometimes it’s just quiet. Either way, without the distractions of daily life, you’ll feel an uncanny awareness of yourself. It’s almost impossible to describe. It’s sort of like a peaceful insomnia. I’m sure there’s a perfect word for it in German. You process everything that’s happened and everything that could happen, but somehow, it’s alright. As I mentioned in my last post, everything unimportant fades away and somehow you just feel calm and ok.

The Accident – All Sorts

“The Accident” happened a few months ago. My fiancé and I were waiting at a stoplight on an overpass when the truck in front of us started to roll backwards. There were cars behind us and to the sides, so we had no choice but to watch as it rolled back and hit us. The trucker got out and explained that he’d been peeing into a cup and must have taken his foot off the brake. The explanation really didn’t make me feel any better and I noticed he left that part out when he gave his account to the cops. I can’t imagine why.

Attractive – The Crohn’s Saga Part 30

There just isn’t too much to say about this one. No one is attractive as a patient in the hospital. You revert to an infantile existence. Luckily, nurses and doctors have seen it all. This is where you need to let go, trust them that it’s ok, and just let them take care of you. It’s very easy to say, but very difficult to do. It’s pride-swallowing to let someone care for you like that. If you fight it though, you’ll drive yourself crazy and make yourself sicker. You just need to hit that zen place I’ve talked about in the last few posts. Let go, focus on you, and allow yourself to receive help.

Schoolboys – Let’s Go to School in Belgium

One of my favorite bars in the world is in Leuven, Belgium. It’s called Libertad. The owner/bartender has amazing taste in music and because of that, my friends and I went there several times a week. As nights went on and alcohol was consumed, we would go up and request songs. It became a feat. That a man with such great taste would approve and play our requests started to mean something.

Full disclosure – I lived a bohemian life in Belgium and I loved every second of it. Tuition was cheap, student loans covered housing, and I worked part-time teaching English to help pay for groceries and drinks. My friends and I had a lot of idle time, so we often filled it with low-grade hooliganism. Case in point, I founded a fraternity my third year there. What you see above is one of the many tests we made our one initiate endure. He’s one of my favorite people and he was a hell of a sport indulging us as often as he did. This was one of the worst calls I ever saw him make and I will always love him for it.

I probably should have studied more, but I’m usually pretty glad I didn’t. I’m proud of my degrees, but I cherish my memories with friends more.

Flashback – Cough Explosion – The Crohn’s Saga Part 31

So, remember how I said that when you have Crohn’s long enough, you develop a fear of where things can go? This is how that happens. You learn a lot when you’re recovering from surgery.

This flashback is set in 1999. I was 18 and recovering from my first surgery. I had been very sick for months, but the procedure was actually pretty simple. This was in the days before laparoscopic surgery, so they cut me open from sternum to groin and removed about 9 inches of my small intestine and colon. I was warned not to cough or laugh too hard, since the wound could split back open. I minded the warning, but didn’t take it too seriously. And then this happened. And then I took it seriously.