No, this isn’t about breakups and relationships or sex. This is about all those times I’ve had a Crohn’s Disease setback and the various rates at which I bounced back. I wanted to write about it because a lot of people don’t seem to understand how I can be in the hospital one day and out to dinner with friends the next.
A few weeks ago I spent the day in the ER thanks to a partial bowel obstruction. It happens every now and then. When the pain gets unbearable I go to the ER for pain relief and fluids. This usually helps and I’m able to go home unless I’m in the middle of a more severe flare-up. I got some IV steroids and sent home with some prescriptions to manage this setback as an outpatient.
Steroids are strong and can really kick things back into gear. By the next day, I was feeling much better and was able to attend a special engagement dinner my family put together. I even told the doctors this in the ER, “I have plans this weekend, can you juice me up and send me home?” They were all pretty understanding and understood that this was a minor bump in the road that could be managed as an outpatient. Trust me, if it was more severe they wouldn’t have let me go home.
Here I am looking fantastic (it’s amazing what a shower and makeup will do) even though 24 hours before I was laying on an ER stretcher with a huge dose of Morphine flowing through my veins.
Beauty hack – you don’t need blush when you’re on steroids. You’ll have nice pink cheeks for days.
Other times, it’s not always such a fast turnaround. Especially when it comes to surgery. I have never had the luxury of recovering from a laparoscopic surgery. I’ve always had to have a large abdominal incision and that’s probably because of the cluster fuck of my first surgery.
Recovering with a very large abdominal incision is not easy. It hurts when you breathe and don’t get me started on how bad it is when you have to sneeze or cough. Obviously each day it gets better as you heal, but it’s not as fast as you would like. Longer recoveries also take a toll on your mental health as well because it is easy to come down with cabin fever.
I spent about a month on the couch recovering after my last major surgery back in 2014 and it took a toll on me mentally. I was depressed and felt alone (even though Luna was new in my life and constantly keeping me moving).
Even without surgery sometimes you can’t bounce back from a flare-up quite the same. Last year I spent quite some time in and out of the hospital towards the end of the year. It was frustrating and depressing. At the time I was just not strong enough to fight off those pesky flare-ups. The hospital should have just set up a revolving door for me.
Things can change quickly for me. I can be perfectly fine one day, in the ER that night, and back to myself the following day. The human body is pretty amazing and even more so with the advancement of medical interventions. Other times I need a gradual build up to being my old self. Don’t be shocked when you see someone with a chronic illness who looks fantastic so soon after a set back (or vice versa).
No matter how many times Crohn’s Disease kicks me down, I always get back up. Every rebound is different. Don’t expect them to be the same. Your body will let you know what you are ready for, just make sure you’re paying attention.
