Living Daily with Crohns Disease Topic: Food

As I sit here I am pondering what to eat.  Correction, what I can actually eat.  One thing I have learned are the trigger foods and the foods that go down easy.  Trigger foods are the healthy good tasting things, the easy foods are heavy white starches.  Early on I realized I had an intolerance to milk.  The sugar in even the non-fat milk just kicks my butt.  Nuts are horrible, no matter how much you try to thoroughly chew them. Popcorn is an absolute not, spicy foods, crunchy foods and sugar are all foods I avoid.  I have learned to have a low fiber non sugar cereal when I crave it with water.  Sounds horrible I realize but if you are craving cereal enough you will learn to enjoy it.  No cream with coffee, even the substitutes and soy don't work.  All candy because of the sugar is avoided.  Mexican, Italian, Chinese Food etc.... are all avoided.  The consequences is heavy painful diahrea and pain that doesn't want to stop.  It may take a while to become faithful to this diet but eventually you give in.  Hard fresh vegetables and fresh fruit are avoided.  The fresh vegies don't digest so well and the acid in the fruit is hard to digest.  Basically high fiber foods just increase the symptoms, one thing you try to avoid is anything that will loosen your bowels when dealing with active crohn's.   

Living Daily With Crohns Diseae Topic: Sleeping or lack thereof

So sleeping or lack thereof is an issue with this disease.  I'm sure I am not alone.  We are all probably sitting up at night trying to get through the pain.  I have found that if I use my heating pad all night on high it gets me through the night, but not without waking up and tossing and turning.  After many sleepless nights, I now sleep with the TV on pain pills at my bedside and something to take them with.  It's too bad, because you can't get well and heal without proper sleep.  The better sleep you get the better you feel with this disease.  I recently got a prescription for a sleep aid, but am reluctant to try it, for fear I will be stuck on it the rest of my life.  Seems silly probably to some, but I no longer trust doctors to completely have your best interest at heart when it comes to your health, I have learned you have to take the bulls by the reign and lead a lot of  your care yourself.  In and out of bed everyday seems to help and is a pleasant respite considering how I feel. Having the comfort of taking a 1/2 of a pain pill and cuddling up with the heating pad is a nice relief.  That's why being home is comforting.  I have the advantage of having taken full advantage of my energy in life prior to this disease and am thankful that I did. 

Living Daily With Crohns Disease

Crohn's seems to have no feelings as to when it decides to strike.  During a nice conversation on the phone with my daughter this morning, she said, "mom are you on the toilet"? Yes, unfortunately I was.  Didn't want to end my conversation early.  It would be nice to say you get used to it, but how do you get used to constant pain.  That seems to be the worst.  You can handle constant bowel movements, not nice maybe, but still manageable to some degree, but the pain isn't so much.   It's hard to plan to go and do anything as your body doesn't always agree.  There are just so many times that you can back out and people stop understanding.  There is a high degree of anxiousness in doing everyday things.  When crohn's symptoms strike, there isn't time to complete the task your at, in line at the grocery store, at a stop light, the list goes on.  Nothing, nodda that you can do about it.  This might be the reason that crohn's patients begin to isolate theirself.  A self preservation technique or just sheer need either way it makes life a bit easier. When you are under the weather or not feeling well, nothing is better than being home. 

Living Daily With Crohns Disease

I hope and pray you are not one of us, but if you are, I only hope that I can offer some advice, assistance or just plain simple understanding that you are not alone.  Crohn's Disease inflicted me approximately 10 years ago.  There were symptoms early on but never anything that caught the attention of myself or anyone else.  Of course, I had never even heard of this Disease.  At the time I didn't know that I had a family member that I had never met that was inflicted with this at an elderly age.  My hope is that there will be some cure in the future, if not in my lifetime, then within the lifetime of my own adult children.  It can be a hard and harsh reality to live daily with the disease and the symptoms that accompany it.   But like everything else in life, there are good and bad days.  Hopefully, more of the latter for you.  I have so much to say and won't try to fit it in all on my very first try.  My hope is that you will check back often.