yo-yo

about a year ago, when i was told I was diabetic, i weighed about 230. i went on a good diet and exercise plan, and whittled myself down to about 200. then i started my flare and ended up in the hospital in May with pancreatitis, and got down to 190. i stopped my good diet with all the fresh veggies and just tried to stick to low residue, cooked, bland soft things. i was pretty stable at 210 for the summer, then i turned into an anaconda and ate everything in sight, and am back up to 230. *sigh* back to the drawing board. but once i'm out of this flare, and i think i'm really almost done this time, i can go back to eating even better than I was before, and I won't be all tired and anemic this time around.

this was a pretty good week, but i had traveling pain. see, i had gotten used to the UC abdominal cramping type pain, but with the steroids, that's mostly gone. no, this week it started with upper abdominal pain. it started off like heartburn, then spread everywhere. i joked it was my pancreas again, but it just felt deep and central, it was really distracting and nothing made it better. it was simply awful. but it went away just as suddenly. then wednesday i woke up with the worst headache i think i've ever had. it felt like my ears were going to pop off my head. it was weird, because unlike the headaches i used to get where the pain was all on the right side of my face, this one was in the back of my head. then it moved down my neck, over my shoulders, and went away. now i just have a normal stress headache that tylenol can take care of (which is totally due to stress at work).

i realized i was feeling better because i feel less angry and despondent, and have less to bitch about in here. also, i picked up GI Monitor for my ipod touch, and where at the beginning of the month i was logging everything, the more normal i started to feel, the less i logged stuff. i guess it's not as important to jot down "everything normal, I feel fine" as it feels when it's "oh god the pain kill me now pleeeease"

i also joined up with that wearecrohns site, which was kind of weird. doesn't seem to be that much activity over there. i'll probably check it out again, it could potentially be a great site, it just doesn't seem to get alot of traffic. i pop by healingwell on occasion, but it seems like the same convos over and over, the same weirdos popping up with some herbal new agey bs "cure", and the same folks pushing rectal meds when after a point, rectal meds don't do much except take $$ out of your wallet. i think that's what sucks alot about UC -- there are so many variants so what works wonders for one person is gonna do squat for you. for example, if you have only a few cm of involvement, or proctitis, rectal meds will be a great help. start getting deeper, maybe enemas will help, but not so much suppositories. once the UC progresses past a certain point though, I think it's too far for either to be much help. same with asacol. i started off taking 2 pills three times a day. after a few months, my old GI increased it to 4 pills 3 times a day. that's 12 pills! plus rectal meds, I was taking 6.8 grams of mesalamine daily... for months! the copay for asacol is $50; the suppositories were also $50. eventually i was like, doc, are you sure i should be taking so much of this stuff? is there anyway to take fewer pills here? so he gave me lialda, which is basically 6 asacol stuffed into one pill so you can take it once a day. i took it twice a day. then i got supersick and landed in the hospital, but i don't think it was due to all the mesalamine -- i think the UC just started kicking my ass for real for some reason. it wasn't content to make me just miserable with D every day. Now it wanted blood, all of it, until i was dead. i changed GIs, my meds are still changing, but now i only take 3 asacol twice a day.

i met a woman at infusion once who was a patient of my old GI. she was on remi too, and he still had her taking 12 asacol a day. i wonder if he really thinks all those pills are necessary, or if he figures they can't hurt. my new doc's opinion was that since they are anti-inflammatory and may have some anti-cancer properties, it was good to continue taking them, but since my UC was so active, it really wouldn't be enough to get me into remission.

i guess i wouldn't care as much if it were the only pills i took all day, but i take alot of stuff. i take claritin and singulair for allergies, lexapro for ibs, metformin for diabetes. now i take pred and iron in the short term. i just finished procrit and started humira. also, i have the vsl 3 probiotic. i had to take over one of the vegetable drawers in my fridge for medications. and oh yeah, nuvaring, because at least some part of me has to be predictable.

wow, this post is just a mess. just a brain dump and not particularly interesting. but 6 months from now, i'll be able to look back and say, oh yeah, that was when i was just starting humira. look how far i've come.