it may be a understatement to say so, but it is true nonetheless, and i feel the length of time has to be acknowledged. it’s been almost a year since i last posted anything here and while i’m forced to wonder if it’s worth continuing to pay the hosting and domain name fees, i can’t yet bring myself to close the site and recent events have left me with some motivation for an update.

a little over two weeks ago i asked a couple friends of mine to take me to the emergency room at straub clinic and hospital; the first such phone call i’ve ever made in my life. it probably won’t be the last, but i’ll come back to that in a minute. since about mid-day on that saturday, i had been vomiting every few hours. after the third time, fearing there was blood coming up along with bile (i hadn’t eaten anything all day), i thought i might have a perforated ulcer and didn’t want to leave it to chance. so, being the good friends they are, they adjusted slightly their evening schedule and took me straight away.

i was quickly put in a bed, given a gown and a barf bag, and was seen by the on-call doctor within 20 minutes, though it seemed much longer. the doctor was immediately inclined to think whatever was going on was crohn’s related, which admittedly annoyed me. since my initial symptoms, i had never had any serious problems caused by the disease and i’d certainly never been to the hospital as a result of it. given my symptoms and what i’d read online, i thought it was an ulcer. but that’s why i’m not a doctor.

at a little after 7pm, i had a hospital id bracelet. by 9pm, i had had three glasses of contrast and had a scan of my gut. it was either a ct scan or mri; i have no idea which. the scan quick confirmed what the doctor had thought; existing damage and inflammation had resulted in a total bowel obstruction. it was the obstruction and not a perforated ulcer that caused the vomiting as all the “stuff” in my system had only one direction to go. all the excess fluids were accumulating in my stomach every few hours.

immediately they began the paper work to admit me to the hospital and while that process was under way, i experienced my very first ng tube, undeniably the worst part of the whole experience. When the nurse described the procedure to me, i told her i had a very sensitive gag reflex and asked if i could be knocked out, or given something to suppress the reflex.

“oh no, don’t worry, i’ve done this hundreds of times and am really good at it. it’ll be ok,” she said with a cocky smile. well, maybe the next time someone says that to her, she’ll think twice, because almost as soon as she began to stick the thing down my nose, sure enough, i threw up all over the both of us. needless to say, i was not happy and while she ran off whining and calling for a doctor, i was forced to sit there, soaking, vomiting, and holding the tube where she’d left it, a third of the way down my throat.

finally, around 11pm, they placed the ng tube, cleaned me up, and wheeled me to a room where i spent the next five days recovering and being monitored to ensure i didn’t need surgery to clear the blockage. thankfully, i didn’t.

by late afternoon on that monday, i had improved enough to allow them to remove the tube. by thursday afternoon, i was on my way home, with a detour to my pharmacy to pick up a host of post-hospital prescriptions.

so, what the doctors are saying is that existing damage done by the disease has created scar tissue toward the end of my small intestine which has narrowed that section making me more prone for this type of thing to happen again. what they’re not currently sure about is just HOW much narrowing there already is. the new medication is meant to step up the treatment and even further suppress my immune system to prevent additional damage and maybe, just maybe, reverse some of the damage already done.

it’s too early to tell, as i’m waiting for the new drugs to reach sufficient levels, at which time they will taper off the steroids i’m on and, at some point in the not too distant future, once things have stabilized, they will do a contrast x-ray of that section and see if surgery is needed.

it sounds scary, but frankly, i’m not that bothered. actually, there’s a part of me that thinks if surgery can remove the badly damaged section, leave in place the 99% that’s still good, and greatly reduce the chances of future obstructions, why the hell not just do it? sure, surgery doesn’t sound like fun and i can’t say i’d look forward to what i imagine would be an extended recovery period, but i think not knowing or being able to predict when i’ll be forced back to the emergency room is worse.

what this experience has solidified in my brain is what with whatever science, whatever research, whatever new drugs are being designed, the medical profession still knows very little about this disease. i sort of knew that before, but after being told by both doctors and surgeons time and again during my five day hospital stay that they don’t know what caused the flair-up and subsequent obstruction, that they can’t tell my what steps i might take to prevent it from happening again, and that they can’t tell my if or even when it will happen again, its burned in my brain. my gut, without, and maybe even with surgery, is basically a ticking time bomb for future obstructions, or worse.

there’s a lot more to talk about, but i’ve topped 100o words here and who knows how long your attention span actually is. so i’m going to end for now, but check back soon, as i plan to do a lot more writing in the coming weeks and months.