health
it was in the summer of 1995 that i first suffered an inflammatory condition; i had gone jogging through wakefield in the sun, despite having felt the sniffles coming on; soon, as well as a running nose, my throat became red and i found swallowing painful; in fact, i think my swallowing was permanently affected by that episode; i was given cortico-steroids to squirt up my nose; after a month or more, i recovered;
in early 1999, just as i was completing my computer science degree, my health collapsed; my mouth and throat became inflamed, and my intestines began to malfunction; i sweated every night (soaking the bed), my appetite vanished, and i lost several stones of weight;
a perturbation under the skin near my anus was dismissed by my gp; having become septic and been drained in the autumn of that year, it was revealed to me to have been an abcess, a common symptom of inflammatory bowel disease;
thanks to a colonoscopy soon after, i was diagnosed with crohn's disease;
i had suffered from a back problem since waking up after a beer festival in 1997-11; my dad had tried to steal a piggyback ride, when we were both quite inebriated; i had collapsed under the unexpected mass, landing on my rump; i hobbled about on that first morning, with a sharp pain near the bottom of my back;
the pain came and went, over the following months and years, and i became susceptible to shocks, such as walking into an unseen gap in a pavement, when i would stiffen in pain; i visited a doctor or two, and received some nice physiotherapy in the summer of 1998, from helen edwards at west park hospital in wolverhampton; but they were treating me blind;
while recovering in my hospital bed from that `excision and drainage' of my perianal abcess, with dying men groaning around me, i noticed my back feeling stiffer; this stiffness grew over the months, and then i went to my new gp, who referred me to a rheumatologist;
she had bad news for me; i was in the unlucky 5 percent of crohn's disease patients who also had ankylosing spondylitis;
for my back, i was advised to swim; but i never did; i have always found it difficult to exercise without something to throw around; for example, cross-country runs at school were always desperately dull, unless they involved dangerous paths that required my concentration;
i received some hydrotherapy, but then i was on my own;
in late 2001, i was still taking steroids and some other drug for my bowel; not the kick-ass dosage i had initially taken at the end of 1999, but enough that i wished i wasn't taking any; the dosage had been reduced over time, since the worst of my symptoms (oral ulcers, intestinal pain and blood) had receded;
as my consultant had recommended, i was still eating as i always had done; a bit less, i suppose, but all the same stuff; at this time, i remember being in the habit of making lovely thick banana milkshakes; they were tasty; however, while my mouth had a party every day, my bottom was not having such a good time; every morning, i all but shat my arse off (by which i mean that i suffered a protracted and painful evacuation); not a good start to the day (lest i give banana milkshakes too grave a reputation, i should mention that i had been suffering this fate long before it had occurred to me to make them);
i took a day off work to meet mum in birmingham; as we sipped wine at bacchus, she brought a book out of her bag; it was a copy of something john had been recommended by a colleague on the set of `peak practice'; it was called `eat right for your type'; i was happy to try something new, and it worked; the symptoms i had been suffering (including ulcers on the sides of my hips) improved dramatically, as i gave up bananas, cow products and wheat, amongst other things;
that relatively happy condition has survived to this day; i gave up the drugs in 2002; they say that more recent drugs would alleviate my remaining symptoms; i believe them, but i just don't like drugs;
my back remains stiff, but i'm happy with what i'm doing to manage it; having practised t'ai chi for a number of years, my exercise has taken a more active turn; now i walk and run, keeping my back and ass as strong as i can
but later i became cold and felt worse; the chilly air tumbling off every window in the house didn't help, so all the curtains were closed at about 14:00;
i occupied myself with `the phantom menace' before bed (i must have been ill); i threw up a little and then suffered a restless night with the trots; laundry in the morning; the south park movie in the afternoon, which really did me some good; i was crying with laughter;
there would have been more laundry this morning, but last night i remembered the drill; bog roll in the pants; well, not the roll exactly; but paper from it; ended up slinging the pants out of the back door; but no spoiled bed linen;
it's a good read, this, isn't it?
anyway, when i got downstairs, i discovered that the pants had been retrieved from their ignominious position near the outside bin; ma must have washed them for me; `that was quick' i thought; but no; she had thought i must have dropped them after doing my laundry, and had put them on the radiator to dry! that's right, mum; share the stink!
i did a little eating yesterday, which didn't hurt; i'm not back to solids yet, but i feel somewhat better;
the strangest symptom was that all my loose shit smelled of salmon; i'm accustomed to that smell after eating salmon, but not otherwise;
in other news, my fedora 10 won't hibernate now; it wakes as soon as it goes to sleep
addendum: this night, i had another christ college end-of-term dream; hugging two friends in the alway house senior common room; adam ormrod in the left arm and (i think) des lally in the right; and then i was about 5 rows behind prodip, fairly central, at end-of-term assembly; he was heckling the teachers; for my benefit, i think; and i was cringing with everyone else; but he was cool
00007e3f | 2008-12-09T11:02:48Z | -no-label- | -mt4-
ma has texted me to say that doctor jo recommends rice for my current illness; anyway, despite my nocturnal discomfort, i learned a few things from bbc radio 5; like this year will be 1 second longer; a correction to account for a slowing of the earth's rotation;
i dreamed of walking charlotte felman to cardiff high school this morning; it didn't look much like it, but i think that's what it was supposed to be; the left edge of the front of the building was more prominent than the right; a covered entrance, under which were parked construction vehicles; and a crane overhead; we approached the frontage from the right; charlotte looked as she did the last time i saw her (at gran and gramps' place), though in something like school uniform; i think that's all i remember; very vivid; quite nice
00007e56 | 2008-12-10T10:47:49Z | -no-label- | -mt4-
00007e57 | 2008-12-11T10:23:38Z | -no-label- | -mt4-
my appetite has been returning slowly; nothing heard from my arse since that night; i've no energy, but i feel okay;
the peppermint oil idea had been given to ma by uncle billy, who had heard that it was good for irritable bowel syndrome;
caught humph's final ``i'm sorry i haven't a clue'' last night on bbc 4; it struck me for the first time how similar jeremy hardy's behaviour is to that of mark watson
00007e61 | 2008-12-17T10:52:56Z | -no-label- | -mt4-
i have thought of 4 things that might have chilled my gut; the first is the peppermint oil, taken after lunch and dinner; the second is the lack of food the gut had to cope with while i was ill; the third is a more specific version of the second scenario; perhaps a damaged area of gut was able to heal in the absence of food; the fourth scenario is perhaps the least likely; that i flushed something out of me with all that weird salmon shitting;
anyway, i hope i can keep it up
00007e6e | 2008-12-21T13:52:11Z | -no-label- | -mt4-
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