Deena Bingham
It’s been awhile since I have written a post. I apologize for being away for so long. It seems that I was not able to take my own advice from my March Post The I Am Well Trap. I did not keep it in perspective and retreat back into my bubble when I needed to. I wasn’t honest with myself and or up front about my limitations. I felt guilt. I did not rest and recuperate at the start of a flare.
Since February of this year I have been fighting one virus after another, never being able to completely heal from one infection before the next one hit. I became run down, but continued to push myself harder. Continuously adding things to my schedule with the exception of rest days, which is what I should have been doing. The more I added, the more guilt I felt, and the more run down I became. All of these activities in itself should have been enough to do it but I was also planning a wedding for my eldest daughter on top of all of the other stuff. This is where the guilt comes in. I didn’t want to slow down because I didn’t want to disappoint my daughter and my guests. Which is silly because I would never disappoint my daughter, my friends or my family because I wasn’t well, they would have completely understood. In reality I was putting that pressure on myself. As always being my own worst judge and critic.
My health was starting to slowly unravel:
In February I had a flare which we thought was another Colitis attack, I had a couple of those episodes since January.
In mid-April I was hospitalized after fourteen months of being hospital free with a minor flare.
In May, three days before the wedding, I had extreme pain in my stomach. I had an MRI but nothing was found. It was assumed I was dealing with another Colitis flare. Still unsure at this point of why I was having them. Originally we thought it was just an infection or virus but I wasn’t healing.
I was becoming more and more fatigued.
In June during the International Rotary Conference in Atlanta, I became very ill again. This time the so called Colitis flare was so bad it was hard for me to be away from a bathroom.
Towards the end of June the attacks became so bad that I hardly ate anything for a couple weeks because the cramping was awful when I did. I became dehydrated and pardon the TMI, I started to bleed every time I had a bowel movement which was often.
At this point I was exhausted, frustrated and doctor’s were starting to be concerned. I was immediately scheduled for an EGD and Colonoscopy.
The colonoscopy revealed that it was possible that I have Crohn’s disease. The doctor’s exact words were: “I hate to give you two diseases but we suspect Crohn’s Disease”. On the bright side it is limited to my Colon and if I take the medicine for the next six months it is possible to prevent full blown Crohn’s. Thus, began my journey of self evaluating my diet, lifestyle and learning how to manage Crohn’s & Lupus! I had already began the journey of eating healthy most of the time. No gluten, preservatives, over the counter or fast food as stressed in previous posts, but now it was time to get extremely serious once again. After much more research on diet and disease, I became a vegan.
Becoming a Vegan was not as hard as I thought it would be. Other than the whole Gluten Free Vegan thing 🙂 Which makes eating out extremely difficult! The key to being successful is to not fill your diet with flour products. This is what a lot of people do when they become vegan. My next post will address how I started the Vegan journey and how to get enough protein, variety and good foods into your diet on a busy lifestyle.
With everything that happened to me in the last few months, I was unable to concentrate on my blog posts, but at this point I am making a promise to myself and to you that I will post my journey more consistently. The whole reason for me starting this blog was to let you know that you are not alone, that there are other people out there with chronic diseases experiencing the same ups and downs that you are. I have also come to terms with the fact that all of my posts don’t have to be long, meaningful, pulitzer worthy writings. That they can be long, short, musings and everything in between as long as I keep documenting my journey.
Once again thank you for letting me be a part of your journey and you being a part of mine. Keep fighting the good fight and through all of life’s challenges, may your days be filled with joy, peace and contentment.
God Bless you!
Deena 🙂
