Crohn's Essays: 2

Okay folks, this one is pretty rough. No edit, no nothing.

What the Hell?

That feeling had been going on for weeks – like part of my stomach was trying to grind up glass instead of the salad I'd just polished off. I was trying to get healthy, you see. Eat more salads, fresh produce, quit smoking, get some more exercise. You know, all the good stuff that makes the New Year's list. Except I never kept New Year's lists. The self betterment scheme was a strange off shoot of a banned book month that we'd instituted at the apartment. Healthy mind, healthy body. Besides, I had to do something with myself. I had two Bachelor's degrees, and I was working at Wendy's for God's sake.

Reality check. Consider me thoroughly humbled. My best friend was the assistant manager at the Wendy's close to where I lived, and she was understaffed at the same time I needed work – why shouldn't we both win?

Yeah, except that a few months turned into almost a year, and the last half of that the pangs started coming. Just a twinge here and there at first. A little nausea, some pain. Chalk it up to a gas bubble and move on with life. Wash some trays, line them, try not to beat the idiot at the front counter with it. Nothing against people who sit at the front counter of a fast food place, but when you've been there for a little while, and you're still staring at the menu with your mouth hanging open and a vacant expression on your face, it makes me want to do something to make sure you're still with the rest of us in reality. There's a weird catatonia that comes over people when faced with a menu, and I've often wondered if it would respond to the same therapy as hysterics – a sharp slap to the face.

In the end it was the stress, we figured out, although the many doctors thought my concept of stress antagonizing the gut was just too strange to be believed. I believe it though, because I've had to live with my gut, and they haven't, and I know that it gets worse when I'm staring down someone's throat while they gape at a menu board. Or at the sandwich maker who got totally baked out of his head before he came into work and doesn't even know what a hamburger is at this point. Or at the incessant dinging of the drive through timer, or the cacophony of fry timers all going off at the exact same instant, and yet somehow completely out of rhythm with each other. I know that my gut hurt worse when all of these things would come together like some sort of unholy gestalt, and the hair on the back of my neck would stand up, and my shoulder muscles would force everything up around my ears. I actually envied the pressure fryer because at least it had a vent.

Some things just made my gut worse. My job. My period. Rice (of all things). After a while, salads. Then hamburgers. Then ramen. Anything fried. So pretty much everything at work, where I spent most of my day, was totally off limits. And most anything else was off limits to a point – unless I wanted to avail myself to a fast food public restroom; I had a hang up about all public restrooms at this early stage in the game though. And let me tell you, I cleaned the fast food restroom often enough to know, beyond any shadow of any doubt that might flit through anyone's head, that no one (and I mean no one) steps into a public restroom in a fast food joint to take a dump unless it's absolutely an apocalyptic necessity. Like they just got released from the hospital after a heavy meal of activated charcoal and laxatives.

And I'm supposed to plunk my ass down on one of those seats? Yeah. Right. Not in this lifetime, thank you ever so much. There is no squat-hovering over the seat during a gut crisis, either. It's either sit down, or fall down. Your leg muscles just don't have the dexterity to help you levitate over the public toilet when you're focused on the pain in your gut. Besides, I might have gut problems, but I still had some sort of control over my ass, unlike most of the people who locked themselves in there during business hours.

At any rate, eventually, food wise, I was pretty much down to Chunky Soup (steak and potato), Campbell's chicken noodle, and Cup O Noodles. I had so much chicken broth in me (I wish I were joking) that I could literally smell it in my sweat. And since I had lost about a third of my body weight and all of my energy, showering was not something that came easy. There was a lot of time for smelling. I still can't eat anything that is blatantly chicken broth. Just the idea makes me nauseous.

I noticed there was a distinctly red color in the toilet at one point. I called my wonderful boyfriend in to ask his opinion. Stupid me, he's color blind and couldn't tell me a damn thing. The question was cleared up within the next two days when it looked like something Biblical had happened in that toilet. I had been wondering how much one person could shit in one day up until then, which seemed like a reasonable point of contemplation. Now I was wondering how one person could bleed that much and not pass out.

Then my ankles did this weird thing. One of them swelled up to about three times its normal size. No joke. It was like the worst sprain a person ever had, except that I hadn't done anything to it. It was just huge. And I couldn't walk on it, really. Which was kinda funny, because I had diarrhea so bad I had to sprint to the bathroom about six to eight times a day. I'm reasonably sure it was a funny picture. The rest of the time I sat with it propped up, thinking, “wow, maybe there's really something wrong with me. Like a parasite or something. Or an infection. Something that's gonna take some serious antibiotics. Or maybe a trip to the vet or something. Jesus, maybe I better head for the doc-in-the-box down the road!”

So I called Mom, and we went to the doc-in-the-box. After an absolutely humiliating exam, the details of which have no place in a humorous commentary, the doctor came back into the exam room and said that we had to get to the hospital in the next city because the sample he took showed a lot of blood.

Sooo...what the hell? I'm hemorrhaging now? Come on, guy, you had your finger up my ass with all sorts of lights and shit, and you can't tell me anything?

He couldn't, or he wouldn't, and either way, Mom and I went to the hospital and learned the hard way that we had been “routed” from the hospital that was in the town where we lived to the other one. At one point, we got lost, so Mom pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store where there was an apparent tent revival happening in the parking lot. She came back with bunk directions, but I had an idea where this was, so I finally lost my patience and told her to get in the damn passenger seat and let me handle it.

We found our way to the hospital, but I let Mom tackle the issue of parking. Jokes on her.

I was assured in clipped tones that while I was anemic (they weren't sure how I managed to stay upright), I wasn't hemorrhaging. The doc wanted to do another “exam” a la Area 51, but I put a stop to that. Once was quite enough for one day. I brandished the results of the exams the other doctor had run like a shield – “fecal guiac something or other! See! Already had one of those today. No need for you to bother with that one.”

So he settled for a pelvic. Doctors are in a funny position when they're doing a pelvic exam. You'd think they'd be a little more conscious of their technique. This one had obviously been a chimney sweep while working his way through medical school. And while he's doing this, his head is about level with my foot.

That gave me something to think about. Lucky for him what he lacked in finesse he made up for in speed.

He told me, in the most unremarkable voice possible, with his back turned to me as he washed his hands, that I probably had Crohn's, which was serious, but very treatable.

Well, what the hell? At least I wasn't crazy....