Month: May 2017

There are few experiences more satisfying than coming home from the hospital. Being hospitalized is sort of like being outside of your life and outside of time. It’s a different world entirely. Going home means returning back to your life. This can be stressful, sure, but overall, it’s just so nice to feel better and be back in a warm safe place with the people you love most.

So here’s what happened to me. The IV infusion of cyclosporine worked and I started to get better. However, you can’t be released from the hospital under IV drugs, so I had to switch to the pill form. As you saw last time, that was a pretty tough switch for me. However, after two weeks in the hospital, I was finally declared well enough to return home. As you’ll see in the coming weeks, this didn’t mean that I was better by a longshot, but it did mean I got to return to my fiancé and my dog. If there is such a thing as heaven, mine looks like the cartoon above.

So yeah, this happened the day after I got home from the hospital. Maybe I’m alone in this, but sometimes I feel like my Crohn’s is a punishment for something. I can’t think of anything I’ve done that warrants it, but man, when the symptoms pile on, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been karmically offensive. I try so hard to eat well, rest, take my meds, and all that, but sometimes nothing helps. It feels like I’ve been singled out to suffer for a while. It sucks.

There’s a Matthew McConaughey movie called Failure to Launch. It’s pretty passable overall except for one running gag. His character is mid-30s or something, but still lives with his parents. Throughout the entire movie, he keeps getting randomly attacked by animals. The message is that by living at home, he has offended nature, and so nature is extracting revenge and trying to get him to make it right. That’s all I could think about when I was stung by that bee. Again though, I’m a pretty good guy and I can’t think of what I could have done.

I guess it’s normal to ask why. It’s normal to question god. It’s normal to resent a streak of bad luck. I’ve had so many people tell me that I’m brave, strong, or tough. I don’t feel brave, strong, or tough. I’m just a guy trying to do his best with the hand he’s been dealt. No more. No less.

Dealing with a lack of understanding is one of the toughest parts of having Crohn’s Disease (or any chronic illness I imagine). It’s one of the core reasons I built this site. Most people are used to getting sick, taking medicine, then getting better. Most people also associate getting out of the hospital with being healed. Crohn’s just doesn’t work like that. For a Crohnie, getting out of the hospital means that you are stable, but not necessarily healed.

Crohn’s defies most people’s conceptions of what sick is supposed to look like. Crohnies may get pale, thin, or fat, but we don’t usually get other external symptoms. When we’re really sick, we may just look like we’re under the weather. People also know what a stomach ache or diarrhea feels like, so they tend to think that’s all Crohn’s is. The result is that they can be dismissive or make us feel like we’re being dramatic. If you’ve read my page About Crohn’s Disease, you know that there is so much more going on than just stomach aches and diarrhea. Again, one of the main reasons for this site is that I want people to understand what the day-to-day looks like.