take steps

My friend Brittny recently did a post about Crohn's disease and a walk that she's doing to raise awareness (and money) for a cure. I'm a bit late in getting this posted (sorry Britt) but I still wanted to make sure that I made mention of it.

You can head here to read her post about her sister.

I won't bore you with a long post...she did a great job considering she doesn't even have the disease!

I was 'officially' diagnosed with Crohn's in '06 when I had extreme abdominal pain, went in for surgery because they saw 'something' on a CT scan, only to come out of surgery with a huge incision down the front of my stomach, a tube down my nose to drain my stomach, and an IV surgically implanted in my chest. I was told I had the disease, that my intestines were knotted up like a fist. I lost over a foot of my small intestine, part of my large intestine and my appendix. I was also told that I might not be able to have more children because my ovaries were covered in scar tissue...we all know how that turned out, right?!

Living with an intestinal diseases sucks. I hide most of it well. I try to ignore it to be honest. But it's hard to ignore when you try and do errands and you're looking for a restroom every 10 min. Or the first thing you look for when you go anywhere is where the nearest bathroom is. I feel ill after nearly every meal. I never know when it's going to be a good day or a bad day. It's very unpredictable. If there were some magical diet that would cure it I would do it in a heartbeat. But there's just not. No magic diet is going to keep my intestines from getting a blockage. And the thing that sucks the most is that my dr said it would probably happen again at some point in my lifetime since the first occurrence was when I was only 33 yrs old. 

It's not cancer. I'm not dying from it. Although, I do have an increased risk in getting colon cancer. Many people have worse issues than me. So I deal with it. It's all you can do. I just really, really, really hope & pray that my kids don't inherit any of my 'issues'. But if they do, they certainly have a sympathetic person in their corner! Because I've had issues my whole life...and I'm just now getting 'used' to it.

So head over to Britt's blog. And maybe make a donation if you wish. And thanks for reading :)

Updated - Britt is having a giveaway for this. You can check it out here!