I'm back everybody! I had a super fun, very hectic few days off. I even ate a few unsafe foods and didn't pay for it too badly! I went to a food festival, hung out with my bestie (who is a confirmed Crohnie), went to the renaissance fair (it was more fun than I had expected!), went down to Illinois and shopped at Ikea and this Japanese market (I love bento boxes and got myself a new one, also was brave enough to eat some sushi which I used to love before I got this gut illness, but hadn't been brave enough to try any raw foods after my guts went crazy), oh and of course hubby and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary.
He made me a chocolate cheesecake for the ocassion, yum yum! I usually don't eat breakfast but this morning we both had cheesecake for breakfast. I feel very good, I de-stressed a lot and had a lot of fun the past few days! Oh, and got some good news too - hubby got a job!!!
It's not perfect, it's only part-time and it's weekends, but it's still better than what he'd been doing (he was working part-time teaching art classes, but that was only about 3 hours per week - this new job will be more like 16 to 20 hours per week). At the very least, it'll be something he can put on a resume and he's going to continue looking for full-time work.
I see I missed a lot on this thread! I'll try to respond to everyone briefly.
Maiden, welcome to the club! I hope your new GI is good, please keep us posted. It sounds like you haven't been ill for very long, or are just at the beginning of the diagnostic process? Would you mind telling us more about yourself and your symptoms? (You may have already posted that kind of info in the My Story section, and if so, I apologize - like I said, I was away from the forum for a few days and am just catching up on everything now!)
Dahlface, sorry to hear you're feeling worse. I feel for you with the migraines, I never had them daily but I did start getting them on about a monthly basis when I first became ill with this gut thing. I'm sure the two must be connected for me, and it sounds like that could be the case with you as well. I've heard the term "abdominal migraine" used on the forum from time to time, although I don't know much about it. I never ever got migraines until this gut illness - I literally had one migraine when I was a teenager, and that was it up until a few weeks before I turned 30, that was when all hell broke loose and my guts went crazy and I started getting migraines with the weird visual auras. Not fun! Do you take anything for the migraines? I'm on 25 mg of Amitriptyline, and as long as I've been at that dose, I have had zero migraines (for a few weeks my GI bumped me up to 40 mg, and I had a migraine at that dose, so he put me back down to 25 mg and I'm fine again). I believe Joan (Astra) was talking a little while ago about how she was having chronic headaches and she was doing drastic stuff to relieve them. I believe she cut out all pain meds and all caffeine. Anyway, I'm rambling, but I hope you get some relief soon! Migraines suck!
I see there's been some discussion about CRP lately - yes, as others have said, it can be a decent measurement of inflammation, but in some of us the bloodwork will come back in the normal range even when we're horribly inflamed and ill. It's not totally reliable. My CRP back in late winter/early spring was 17, and I was still having some issues at that time. More recently, in June of this year, when I was feeling quite well like I am now, my CRP came back as 10. So for me it is a pretty good measurement of how I'm doing. (My GP said anything between 1 and 8 is normal, my GI said normal is between 1 and 10. So again, I'm not quite sure if I'm actually in remission or just very near remission.)
Allie, I don't suppose you've heard anything about those pill cam results lately? I saw on your facebook the other day that you still hadn't heard anything yet. Have you gotten ahold of your GI since he's been back, is he at least working on it?
Star, that virus sounds horrible! It seems like such insult to injury when we get ill on top of already being chronically ill. I hope you feel better soon! And don't let that GP put you on antibiotics if he thinks it's a virus. Antibiotics always make my guts worse anyway so I don't take them unless I absolutely need to.
Sunshine, I hope you're able to get into the Mayo Clinic soon! November is a long way off, too long when you're suffering like this. Keep on your doctor to call them, and also try calling yourself and see if they have any cancellations. And personally, I've had luck with crying on the phone - got my colonoscopy bumped up by several months because I ended up crying on the phone with a nurse at my GI's office. I didn't intend to cry, but my tears were legitimate and I was really suffering at the time and honestly did not know how I was going to make it through the next couple of months until my scope. The nurse took pity on me and gave me an appointment the following week.
If I forgot to respond to anybody, sorry, didn't mean to ignore anyone - there were a lot of posts while I was off having fun! I hope everyone is doing well or at least hanging in there.
