Signing out

It used to be incomprehensible to me how life could possibly be better with a seemingly important organ completely removed. Had I not been so close to dying, would I have ever “given in” to the doctors?

Here’s the crazy thing. I now have more energy and strength than I’ve had for most of my 12 years with UC.*

For example, one of the things that I believe hastened my decline in ’07/’08 was an addiction to energy drinks. I’d be exhausted every afternoon, so in order to get through the day, I’d give myself a large-can dose of taurine, ginseng, caffeine, and vitamin B. Begin the feedback loop: dehydration and hormone imbalance -> more tired -> energy drink -> dehydration and hormone imbalance….

Before that, things weren’t much better. I’d always assumed that my afternoon slumps and my slight brain fuzziness were symptoms of my bad sleep habits. Now I think that my colon was sapping me of energy regardless of whether or not I was in remission.

Proof? OK…

1. I’ve been regularly operating on 6 hours or less sleep, yet my energy has been consistently up.
2. While previous attempts at consistent exercise tended to leave me feeling better briefly, but tired overall, I now do a full 30-60 minutes 1-2 times per week and feel great.
3. Activities that used to cause me back pain somehow don’t any more.
4. Though I hid it and denied it, I used to have long bouts of depression. I’ve been out of work for so long now that I should still be depressed, but instead I’m taking on several projects at once while still applying for several jobs a week. (Gotta love the economy!)

Anyway, I don’t expect to post here for awhile longer. I’ve got a small bit of rectum left for potential J-pouch surgery, so I still output a teaspoon or two of mucus and/or blood 3-4 times a day. That’s so minor compared with everything I’d been through, that there’s no way I’m going to be taking time to post about it any further. I’m eating whatever I want, taking 0-3 tablets of loperamide, and strong enough to hike, canoe, and throw my 4-year-old into the air despite the growth spurt.

As I understand it, autoimmune diseases drain the body of energy because it keeps the immune system going at full tilt. My choice was to give up the ability to reabsorb water at the tail end of digestion or the ability to stay alive. Not that complicated. But my earlier choice, and the one that thousands of others face, is between draining huge amounts of vital energy through their colons and getting the damn things removed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that UC sufferers should have colectomies, but I can at least say with confidence that it’s a waste of life to wait as long as I did once the meds and diets and voodoo stop working.

So goodbye, UC, it’s been, well, a pain in the ass. And goodbye colon. It was nice while you functioned, but can’t say that I’ll miss you.

Slept in till somewhere not far from noon, then had a nap around 19:00.

Ah. Finally got a midday nap. I’ve been up a lot at night lately, so this is good.

A nice 30 min. bath/nap, followed another forty min. nap in bed. Ahhh.

If I haven’t been logging my sleep well lately, it’s probably because I haven’t been doing enough of it. I’ve tended to get in bed between 0:30 and 2:00, leaving me with 6-7 hours of usually-interrupted sleep.

Why do I keep doing this to myself? Obviously not for my health, or to benefit my family. I think in the end it’s because of a trait I share with my daughter: we don’t transition well. We’d rather keep up a single activity until we get good and sick of it, rather than limit it in favor of balanced time management.

I’m also helped in my tiring habit by the quiet that descends on the house once everyone has gone to bed. Then I can work or read for hours at a time without interruption. Until, as now, my eyelids feel as if they’re controlled by an external remote, and someone is frantically hitting the close button. Can’t. Stay. Awake.

Goodnight….

Didn’t do any explicit exercise today, but got some walking in on an errand, and did manage to spend some time sitting in the sun. Isn’t February supposed to be cold?

Got a lot done today, and didn’t even feel a major sleepiness crash like I’ve been having. I think I might have gotten nearly seven hours of near-uninterrupted sleep!

I’ll ascribe the sleep improvement to basically reducing my enteral intake to water and small amounts of OJ. Tomorrow I’ll give the homemade chicken stock I made today a try.

Speaking of food, I took my first foray into becoming one-who-cooks by making a from-scratch marinade for the salmon the others will eat tomorrow. Hope they like it!

Up till 5, then awoken again from about 8-9:30 (dealing with the effects of Theresa’s car having been broken into last night…hood outcome, the police found the one stolen item, a bag with nothing except important work papers, on a random front stoop).

But, got some nice deep sleep from 10-noon, and figure I’ll be exhausted just in time to reset to a 10pm bedtime tonight.

I was so exhausted this afternoon that I could barely open my eyes when Lily and Carol got home. Napped from 14:30-17:30.

Ugh, wtf?! Insomnia till 3:00, and awake at 8:05. Can’t get back to sleep, probably because our furnace has gotten stuck in a mode where it won’t turn off and it blows only cold air.

Whether because of my late naps or because my mind is overrun with random fantasies of how I can put my life back together, I can’t seem to sleep. Ugh.