About two and a half years ago, I was
diagnosed by a GI Doctor with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Irritable Bowel, or IBS (as I will lovely
refer to it for the rest of this article) is basically the medical term for what
you’ve got once they’ve ruled out all the other really scary and serious stuff
that could be wrong with you, but it’s still quite apparent that your digestive
tract is mildly pissed at you most of the time.
This is determined by many tests, trials (and errors) with food, and
boughts of forcibly ejecting the contents of your stomach (I call this ‘fro-ups
if I have to talk about it in polite company), internal discomfort, and what I
like to refer to as the “super poops.”
It’s a bit of a road to get there, but it’s what you end up with once
the doc is sure you don’t have any of the other stuff.
In the interest of full disclosure, let me
just say that I consider myself lucky.
If you have to have a stomach condition, IBS is the one you want. You don’t get the crippling pain of Crohn’s
Disease or Diverticulitis, and you don’t get the diet restrictions of either of
those and some of the others. This was
particularly important to me as I love food.
I was literally, and I do mean literally, praying to God to spare me while
they were running the blood test to determine if I had Celiac disease or not,
because a life without bread is one to me that barely seems worth living. So IBS is the best case scenario. I can generally eat what I want (within
reason) and usually don’t have serious pain.
I’ve never ended up in the hospital due to my condition. So in the realm of stomach issues, it can
certainly be concluded that I am one of the fortunate ones.
That being said, there are simply things
nobody explains to you beforehand about what it’s like to live with said
stomach condition. Things like…
#7. You Will Monitor Your Own Bowel Movements as
Closely as a Mother Does with Her Firstborn Child
My younger sister had her first baby a little
over a year ago, so I know what I’m talking about with this one. On more than one occasion, I have listened to
my sister and her husband, people who are both educated and have successful
careers, talk about poop and all its many possible forms, at length. And it is with great sadness that I inform
you I must now pay as much attention to my own feces as those two do with my
adorable yet poopy little niece.
Have you ever not pooped for five days or
more? Because that is often my
Tuesday. And that’s the better end of
the deal. With IBS, you can ratchet back
and forth between being blocked up tighter than Atlanta’s highways in an ice
storm, and having the aforementioned “super poops” with no end in sight. I regularly carry Imodium around with
me. That’s just normal. And when I’m not doing that, I’m often
calculating how much longer I can wait for the fiber and other bowel-friendly
products I consume to catch up, before biting the bullet and taking milk of
magnesia. Because if I don’t make that
call, my body will do it for me, and if it gets to my bowels before I can, then
I not only get a healthy bought of “super poops” as a result, but I get a lot
of pain and nausea that come with it (free of charge!)
My GI doctor reassured me that I could take
milk of magnesia as often as I need to, and I didn’t need to “worry” about it
hurting me. What he doesn’t understand
is, I don’t “worry” about taking too much; I worry about every time I have to
force myself to swallow stuff that tastes like stale mint or cherry flavored
chalk powder, (my throat is clenching up just thinking of it.) It doesn’t matter how it’s flavored. It all
tastes like death. But I do it, to avoid
my body’s even worse version of “Full Inventory Liquidation – Everything Must
Go!”
I have developed euphemisms just to talk
about what’s going on with my pooping for the day without completely grossing
myself out, or my husband, when he’s kind and brave enough to ask. We affectionately borrowed the phrase “making
bears” from one of his old co-workers, and I leave you to imagine on your own
what koala bears, bear cubs, and a grizzly bear attack all mean. (Hint: koalas are surprisingly mean for their
size, bear cubs are little but not entirely harmless, and a grizzly bear attack
is something you’re not always sure you’re glad you survived.)
Yes, nothing makes a woman feel sexy like
having to constantly monitor and talk about her own poo.
#6.
The Doctors Involved Often Have No Sense of Urgency Regarding Your
Condition
I have a good friend whose husband has one
of the much worse stomach conditions.
One of the kind that involves inflammation, severe pain, weight loss,
and jaunts to the hospital. When he first started having issues it took his
family doctor 4 months to get him
seen by a GI doctor. Then, when he
needed to go back in for a flare up, the GI doctor said they couldn’t schedule
him for another 2 months. And the first ER trip his stomach condition
forced him to make, he was kept waiting 7
hours before he was finally seen.
I don’t know if there is any data available
on average wait times for people suffering from stomach ailments, but I would
guess that this is neither unusual, nor a good idea for those doing the actual
suffering. Why, you ask? Well, while this poor young man was waiting
just to be looked at, he lost about 20 pounds and could eat only white
foods. And this is 20 pounds from a guy
who was a healthy weight when the whole thing started. He did not have 20 pounds to lose.
And this is in America! Our motto is basically “thank goodness we
don’t have to wait forever and a day for medical treatment like those poor
schmucks in Canada.” Land of the “don’t
take our guns because we’d rather shoot ourselves in the foot than wait for
medical services, which means we’re” free. We’re proud of our privatized medical
system. Socialized medicine is for
people who don’t mind waiting!
So you can imagine my shock in discovering
that if you have a stomach condition, you are pretty low on the “the doctor will
see you now” totem pole.
Look, I get it. It’s not a heart problem. We’re not in danger of immediate death. But I don’t think that the loss of enough
weight that puts you in the “no longer a healthy human being” category is
acceptable either. My insurance company
is certainly letting me foot enough of this bill that WAITING for that long
just doesn’t seem like what I’m paying for.
My own recent experiences were similar. The first time after I’d seen my GI doctor, I
was taking a two week trip to Europe with my husband. So I wanted to have a follow-up with my
doctor before I left to discuss what was working, and what kind of regimen I
should stick to while overseas, along with getting a note that said I needed to
carry the amount of meds I was taking with me.
I called several times and couldn’t even get the courtesy of a call
back. When I finally got someone to pick
up the phone, they refused to commit to a date before my trip (this was a couple
months in advance, mind you.) I had to
get my husband to call and basically force them to give me an appointment, so I
could ensure that I would be able to go off to Europe and do crazy things like
“eat food” without any trouble. And
after explaining this several times to the receptionist and the nurse, when I was
finally in front of the doctor and had to explain yet again why I was there, he
gave me a blank look and literally asked me, “so what is it you want me to do?”
The second time I learned about the joy of
waiting was even better. In a story I’ll
get into more later, I basically learned that my gall bladder was trying to
kill me. From the time of my first gall
bladder attack, it took an entire month just to get the cursory scans run and
get scheduled to see a surgeon, (which was only accomplished by again employing
my husband to use his charm and persistence to get me an appointment) and then
it took almost another month to get the gall bladder removal surgery
scheduled. That meant I was on a no-to-low
fat diet for almost 2 months, and this is not something I can recommend unless,
again, you are personally trying to lose weight. (And even then, seriously, don’t do it. It’s not good for you.) I lost about 8 pounds while waiting for the
ability to eat food that actually had any significant amount of fat in it
again. I also tend to run a bit on the
thin side, (my family used to lovingly refer to me as a “stick”, and my Middle
School basketball pictures can attest to the fact that there wasn’t much to me
other than arms and legs.) I gained a
few pounds once I got married, but for the first few years, during my yearly
appointment with the lady doctor, she would question me closely about my eating
habits and my mental well-being, trying to make sure I didn’t have some
undiagnosed eating disorder. I didn’t,
but I could understand why she suspected me, all the same. So when I lost 8 pounds I couldn’t exactly
afford to lose, I was worried people were going to start calling me “stick”
again.
Which leads me to…
#5 Your
Doctor Won’t Give You Details About What You’re Putting into Your Body (Unless You
Specifically Ask)
Let me tell you a bit about my regimen, because
I can’t imagine anything more exciting than to discuss what I have to ingest on
a daily basis. In order to currently
keep my IBS under control, assuming all other factors are normal and it’s a
“good day” I take the following –
~ a prescription antacid to keep the pain and
discomfort from an imbalance at bay (I have to take this in the morning, at
least 20 minutes before I eat any food)
~ a probiotic with “live cultures” to keep
the balance of good bacteria in my favor (more on that later)
~ another probiotic that allows me to digest
milk (more on that later, too)
~ a heaping teaspoon of psyllium husk fiber
mixed in with at least 8 ounces of water, and chugged all at once before it
clogs up and becomes undrinkable, (sometimes I pretend I’m drinking an Irish
car bomb instead, but my imagination must be broke, because it doesn’t really
help.) I take this charming concoction twice
on days where I eat a lot of cheese.
If I do all that and don’t miss anything,
there is a very good chance I won’t have any serious issues (most days.) It’s fun to coordinate, because you can’t
take fiber within more than an hour and a half of taking your medicine, and you
can’t take medicine within 2 hours of taking your fiber, because fiber is the
parasite of the supplement world, and gloms on to anything else that gets near
it, masking its effectiveness.
I am a joy to travel with, as many little
bottles, packets, and pills that I have to have handy.
Since I’ve mentioned the fiber, now, I want
to tell you a little story about the discovery I made, a year after I had been
diligently taking the fiber the doctor give me.
As most of you probably know, doctors get
all sorts of free samples of medicines and the like to hand out and get their
patients cheerfully addicted to. My
doctor gave me some handy packets of a big, name-brand fiber, and I took it,
without question.
I sometimes make the mistake of trusting
doctors implicitly, and this time it came back to bite me in the ass. One day, a year later, I happened to glance
at the back of one of my fiber packets (which I had been buying in bulk) when I
suddenly noticed an ingredient in my fiber I had failed to realize was there.
It was the dreaded aspartame.
That’s right, I had been putting aspartame
into my body, voluntarily, for almost a year.
Now I know the stuff probably isn’t going to
kill me. I understand that the claims to
links of cancer and other diseases have been pretty much disproved at this
point, but that doesn’t change the fact that I would never choose to put that
stuff in my body, if I could help it. Because
the box said “sugar free” on it, I assumed (quite wrongly) that meant it had no
sweeteners or sugar of any kind.
Now I am not going to deny that I should
have asked what was in it, or could have even looked before a year had gone by,
but I, like so many Americans, trusted my doctor, and didn’t even think to
wonder about what it was I was ingesting on a regular basis. Which brings me to my point – if you don’t ask, they won’t tell you. My GI doctor doesn’t care that I’ve been
drinking aspartame for a year. He just
cares about passing on that product that he got for free.
Anyways, I switched to an organic fiber that
has ingredients I recognize and is sweetened with beet root (you do have to
sweeten fiber with something or it tastes almost as disgusting as the chalky
death liquid that is milk of magnesia, and my throat muscles haven’t mastered
swallowing bilge everyday without protest) and gave the box of name brand fiber
to a diabetic lady I worked with who had a similar regimen and no objections to
aspartame.
Unfortunately, I still suffer from another
problem, that being…
#4
You Become Obsessed with the Culture of Your Gut
No, I’m not talking about making sure my
stomach listens to enough Mozart, or that my colon understands the beauty of chiaroscuro shading. I’m talking about the colony of bacteria that
lives in my gut and whom it has become my full-time job to constantly appease.
As I understand
it, everybody has a mixture of bacteria in your gut. There is good bacteria (or “the home team” as
I like to think of them) and bad bacteria (the kind that causes certain
diseases and infections if its population swells enough to overpower the “home
team.” Let’s call them “the insurgents”
for the sake of this article.)
My new lifetime
goal has become making sure “the home team” wins enough of the wars that “the
insurgents” don’t turn the battle field (aka my GI tract) into scarred and
desolate ground with no hope of regaining its former glory. This is my mission in life, because if I
don’t succeed, I’m in discomfort and I’m probably suffering from the ‘fro ups
and the super poops for an indefinite period of time.
I achieve this
with the magic that is probiotics.
Basically, little capsules full of beneficial, live micro-organisms that
bolster the colonies of what’s already down there and create new, also
beneficial hives of happy flora and not-quite-fauna-but-more-likely-bacteria. In other words, there’s a big tailgate going on
every time I eat or get exposed to other kinds of bacteria, and I’m recruiting
the tail-gaters to help out “the home team” while sending in subs and the like
before everyone grows tired and gets overwhelmed by “the insurgents.”
This is my life
now. Envy me.
Normally, it’s
a pretty easy job as long as I keep religiously
to my regimen (and I do mean religiously.)
Because if I miss so much as a pill or powder, nevermind get off my
schedule for an entire day, that’s when “the insurgents” pull out the guns and
bombs and possibly chemical weapons, and start causing real havoc.
When you start
with probiotics, it usually takes about a month for the new recruits to team up
with “the home team” and get down to business.
In the meantime, “the insurgents” keep up their shelling, and shooting,
and general causing of death and pain (see note on “super poops”) until the
home team finally has enough ammunition to take over the battle ground and
attempt to make it a beautiful place where healthy bacteria all want to live.
The good side
of this is you don’t have to take Imodium or milk of magnesia every week, and
you can live what is almost a normal life.
Probiotics even have the added benefit of sometimes bolstering your
immune system. I don’t get half the
colds and such my husband does during the year, even though I’m exposed to most
of the same stuff that he is.
The other fun
part is that after 6 or so months, “the insurgents” have figured out all your
current probiotic’s tricks and battle strategies, and start breaking through
the defenses, and so you have to switch your probiotic to a different one in
order to throw them off and retake the battle ground.
But that is at
least somewhat manageable. The real problem
comes when you miss your medicine, or worse, when ”the insurgents” come up with
a weapon so good, it leaves “the home team” staggering and wondering how they
can find the will to go on.
Like the time I
got the stomach virus.
My family had
been passing it around for awhile and I thought
I had missed it. But then, a few days
before Christmas, it hit me, and it hit me hard.
I won’t gross
you out too much with the details, but I will tell you that it was the sickest
I have ever remembered being, and I lost something to the effect of 9 pounds in water weight. (I was quite a “stick” when it was all said
and done.) I probably should have gone
to the hospital, but I didn’t, and managed not to get so dehydrated I died, as
I slowly started gaining back my water weight.
The problem
with getting something like a stomach virus is that, aside from making you
completely miserable while it’s going on, it
completely decimates the culture in your stomach.
That’s right.
All those careful months I had spent lovingly cultivating those happy little
organisms in my tum were wiped out in one 24 hour period, and I was starting
from scratch. I had the bare minimum of
guys required for “the home team” to even continue playing without having to
forfeit.
Which means I not
only had an angry gut, but I got a cold as soon as I recovered from the stomach
virus and was a coughing, snotty mess during Christmas, (my poor husband had to
cook all the food and do all the cleaning since we had brilliantly decided to
host my family that year) but that wasn’t even the worst part (at least not
according to me. You might want to ask
my husband his opinion about Christmas when he has a glass of good Scotch in
his hand.) No, the worst part was that it
took me 2 months after that to get
“the home team” back up to snuff enough that they could even begin to compete
against “the insurgents” again, which means for two months I didn’t feel very
good most days.
And that is my
life, but it still doesn’t address the fact that…
#3. There
Are Other Surprising Things That Effect Your Condition, Even When All Other
Factors Are Optimal
I am one of the
many women on birth control. I’m not
ashamed of that, and I’m not thrilled at the political bru-ha-ha that surrounds
it, because it’s one of the best things that has ever happened to my body. The weeks I take my birth control, my body
functions fairly well, I feel fairly good, and I’m not surprised with a baby
I’m not ready to grow inside my cranky body.
It’s great. It’s especially great
for my stomach condition, because while I am on my birth control and all other
factors remain normal, my stomach condition gives me nary a peep.
But the week I
am off my birth control, weird things happen.
My stomach
condition decides that this is a good time to act up. I get acid-indigestiony pain along with my
cramps and bloating (joy of joys) and it generally doesn’t settle back down
until I’m on the birth control once again.
My doctors find
this “interesting” and “strange,” but they don’t have a clue why this happens.
I also happen
to have a sinus condition (vasomotor rhinitis) along with grass allergies,
which gives me sinus headaches ranging from annoying to “someone please stop my
entire face and neck from hurting before I scream,” and which also decides to
act up during my week off, as it were, (and is possibly the subject for another
article and another time.)
Nothing is more
fun than when my stomach condition and my sinus condition team up. It’s like “the insurgents” find “religious
extremists” who hate each other, but basically have the same goal, and they run
amuck together. Thankfully, I know this
at least will end when the week is over, and I’m back on the no-babies meds.
The jury is
still out on why this happens. But
anytime it wants to stop would be fine with me, because there is literally nothing I can do but medicate myself and
wait for it to be over.
I also have to
make sure I eat at regular intervals (every 4 hours or so) because if I don’t
send a steady stream of food down there, my stomach decides to start chewing on
whatever is already down there. Since
the answer to this is “itself” and that answer hurts quite a bit, I work hard
to avoid this. Times when not even snack
sized foods are readily available are tough for me.
I had two
rounds of gall bladder attacks two years apart, and part of the reason they
didn’t take it out the first time, or right away the second time was because
some of my symptoms were gall bladder, but some of them weren’t. And you know why I think that is? Because I’m pretty certain that things like
gall bladder attacks can trigger my IBS.
So I’m showing conflicting symptoms, because my gall bladder decided to
team up with my IBS and go for the gold.
They can work together to make me miserable and make doctors uncertain
what’s really going on.
My GI doctor
once told me that even though all the stuff I was going through was stressful,
I had to try not to get upset about it.
Why is that you say? Because
stress can also trigger bad IBS episodes.
So I have to remember to not get upset about the very upsetting pain and
spastic colon issues I’m experiencing, because that actually might make it even
worse.
But now I bet
you’re wondering what it’s like to hold down a 9-5 type job (which I do) while
simultaneously managing this condition.
Or go on vacation. Well, the one
thing I can tell you is that…
#2. You
Plan Your Entire Day Around the Bathroom
Even on a good
day, I probably go to the bathroom on average of 15 or so times. Most of this is usually #1, and so it’s not too worrying. See, in order to keep my tummy fairly happy,
I have to drink a lot of liquids. My
morning coffee is almost essential if #2 is even going to be a hope, and after
that I have to drink lots of fluids just to keep everything generally appeased. But the best part is when I chug my daily
fiber with the minimum of 8 ounces of water mixed in. I’m not sure how this works for everyone, but
for me, there is always a point where that 8 ounces or more of liquid suddenly
drops into my bladder with the force of Shamoo competing in a cannonball contest,
and suddenly not running immediately to the bathroom is not an option, unless I want to continue my
day with noticeably damp pants. After the initial
“release” as it were, I go 2-5 times more over the next hour until all that
chugged liquid is out.
And I won’t
even talk about “bad days” where I forced myself to take milk of magnesia the
night before to flush everything out, (pun intended) or when I’m being
subjected to a different round of my dear old friend “the super poops.”
When my boss (who
is an amazingly understanding man) hired me for my current position, he asked
me if there was anything else he needed to know about my ability to do the
job. Since he had been involved during
my first bought of gall bladder and GI issues, and he knew about my stomach
condition, I felt it important to remind him that the IBS meant I had to be “up
and down” from my desk a lot.
Thankfully, he said this wasn’t an issue, but think of all the other
jobs and employers out there in the wide world who wouldn’t share this
attitude.
Despite his
understanding, I still feel responsible to compensate for my bathroom
time. Because of this, I don’t take the
two 15 minute breaks I’m entitled to, but count all the time I’m forced to
spend on the potty towards them. And I
don’t leave until all my work is done, even if that means my IBS forces me to
stay another 15-30 minutes to make sure that’s done. It’s rare, but it happens, and I have a
reputation to keep up despite my stomach condition’s best efforts to sabotage
that.
Vacations and
other outings can be a nightmare, therefore, because I always have to ascertain
where the bathroom is located, make sure I can get to it, and never, EVER take
my fiber, if I don’t know that there will be a bathroom in easy reach when that
first liquid payload gets delivered.
This can make my life very exciting.
Thankfully, my
husband is practically a Saint, and doesn’t get fussed about this or tease me
nearly as much as he might.
Which brings me
to the best part about having a stomach condition…
# 1. Your
Perspective on Things (Like Surgery and What You Can Eat) Makes a Surprising
Shift
Let me tell you
a story.
I’ve had
stomach troubles since my early twenties, (mostly acid and mild discomfort,
with the occasional up-all-night episodes) but the real fun started two and a
half years ago, right before I turned 29.
I started getting some serious pain, and regular bouts of the ‘fro ups
and “super poops.” My family doctor
tried for awhile to diagnose me, then sent me to the GI doctor when he had no
success. The GI doctor ran some standard
tests, but the only thing that came up was that I was told I had sludge in my
gall bladder (or “Smooze” as I liked to think of it, since I grew up on the My
Little Pony movie.) They did a gall
bladder function test, but that one came back good, so they told me I didn’t
need to worry about my gall bladder anymore.
I was not
convinced. They said there was sludge in
there, but I’m not supposed to worry about sludge? I mean the word sludge just sounds creepy and
disgusting and very worrisome. Say it
out loud. SLUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE. Is that
a comforting word to you?
Well, the
doctor decided I had IBS, and I started my regimen of probiotics and antacids
and fiber. But even at the two month
mark I was still getting the occasional bad bought of the old “super poops” and
my doctor had no idea why. Eventually, I
started writing down everything I ate and noticed every single night I had another
bad attack, I had consumed a meal very high in dairy that same evening. So as an experiment I tried taking an
additional probiotic that contacted lactase in it (the enzyme that allows you
to digest milk.) From then on, I had no
boughts of “super poops.” Problem
solved! I didn’t even bother to tell my
doctor about it, I was just that relieved to have a routine where everything
worked again, and didn’t want him to try and tell me otherwise.
Then about two
months ago after dinner, I got so nauseous I couldn’t even sleep or lay
down. My old friend S. Poops came back
for a visit and on top of that, I had this crippling pain behind my right
shoulder blade that would have kept me from sleeping if the nausea hadn’t
already been doing such a good job on that one.
The next day I
went to work feeling hung over, and thinking I had just had a bad night. I was super careful with everything I ate
that day, and then attempted to have some mild Indian food that night (don’t
laugh, I eat Indian food all the time, and it never gives me issues like this,
so to me that was comfort food.)
And I got super
sick again. Same nausea, couldn’t lay
down, same horrible pain behind my right shoulder blade.
And I KNEW it
was my gall bladder. I just KNEW IT.
It was past Urgent
Care hours, so I called my insurance line’s nurse that night and asked her if I
should go to the hospital. I described
my symptoms to her, hoping she would agree with me about the time bomb ticking
within me, and tell me to go in and have that sucker taken out.
But the nurse
wasn’t sure. She told me to go on a very
restrictive low-fat diet, and see my family physician the next day.
My physician
said the same thing as the nurse. Some
of my symptoms were gall bladder and some were not. But I KNEW.
Ever since the sludge, I was convinced that it was only a matter of time
before that sucker got me again, and so despite the doctor’s hesitation (I
started with the one on the weekend shift at the practice, and he had me
follow-up with my family doctor, who has been seeing me since I was 8 years old)
I basically told him to please check my gall bladder to make sure it wasn’t the
issue. My doctor, thankfully, agreed.
And sure enough,
the ultrasound showed that this time I had sludge AND small stones. So my doctor referred me to a surgeon.
In the
meantime, I was on one of the worst diets ever made for a person who loves
food. No red meat. No pizza.
Very little dairy. No fried bread,
or donuts, or other pastries. No
joy. Just salad, lean meats, simple
carbs, and fruits. I ate A LOT of sushi,
and it was the only food I never really got sick of.
A month in I
got an appointment with the surgeon.
Still stuck on the diet. A month
later I had my gall bladder out and could finally transition back into eating
fatty foods again.
And here’s the
thing. I was the happiest, best-natured
surgery patient those nurses and doctors at the hospital had ever dealt with,
(I probably can’t say authoritatively, but I think it’s a pretty good, educated
guess) Because having to live with that
crippling referred pain from my gall bladder behind my right shoulder blade,
having nausea so bad I couldn’t sleep, even though I was incredibly exhausted,
and having to eat what was essentially rabbit food for TWO months, shifted my
perspective so much, that surgery was a walk in the park by comparison. I was looking FORWARD to it, because it was
an end to the pain and to the diet restrictions that caused me to lose 8
pounds.
Understand
this. I WANTED to have surgery. I DIDN’T CARE that they were going to have to
knock me out with anesthesia, put 4 holes in me, and forcibly remove one of my
internal organs, (laparoscopy is amazing.)
Because in my mind, holes and short-term pain were still a happy option
compared to the alternative of going on the way I was. I couldn’t get that surgery scheduled fast
enough. On the day of surgery I was
smiling and thanking everyone who was involved profusely. The only part I flinched at was the IV. Everything else was cake.
Not only that,
but the first time I was able to eat pizza again, I almost cried. The first time I had a bite of porterhouse
steak again, I wanted to weep openly. The
first time I ate ice cream again, I danced in my seat. And the first time I had my husband’s
homemade mac & cheese, smothered with cheddar béchamel sauce, and the first
morning I had a whole milk cappuccino again, I made noises I’m pretty sure
should only come from sex. It was that
good.
It was like I
was rediscovering food, was rediscovering joy, and was rediscovering life. Having something that makes your stomach
condition even worse than what you’re used to, changes your perspective enough
that you have a very different outlook on life.
An outlook where surgery is the best thing that can happen, and the
sight of pepperoni on top of melted cheese brings you to tears.
And that, in a
nutshell, is my life. Gall bladder free,
and proud to be.
