Hey VIFL,
I’d like to ask you guys to pray for me from now through probably the next month or so. I have to get surgery for my ill-behaving colon. No medications, even steroids, are doing the trick. The good thing is that I should be disease-free, at least for a while*, after the surgery.
There are two places that are messed up from the disease: one near my ilium and one in my small bowel (I think). Basically, they will cut out those two areas and connect the ends together. It shouldn’t be a big deal, since there is, like, at least 6 extra feet of colon anyway.
What I really need prayer for right now…is the wait. If I had a choice, I’d be under the knife right now to get it over with, but I can’t even get an appointment to talk with the surgeon until October 6th. This kind of sucks, since right now getting up from a chair or taking a walk can be painful. It even hurts for food to digest. Some days are all right and I can get by with just a simple stomach ache, but other days are severely painful. I’m on Vicodin, but that doesn’t even mask the pain a lot of times; and I’m not really enthusiastic about popping addictive painkillers for a month or more.
Crohn’s is very psychologically troubling too, because it will act capriciously and unpredictably. Sometimes it will make you think that it’s completely gone, when in the next hour you’ll cramp up again and be curled up in a corner some place. This may sound kind of strange, but it’s as though there’s something hateful in the center of your body, always trying to inflict upon you a new form of agony.
I’m really hoping that I won’t go through another severe bout of the disease while I’m waiting. That would SUCK.
But once I’m out of recovery, I should be a happy camper. Chips and salsa for me again! 
* Crohn’s is, in many ways, a mysterious disease that doctors don’t really understand. One of its “mysteries” has to do with the surgery. Doctors can cut out the diseased area of the colon, removing the disease COMPLETELY, but for some strange reason, the disease will pop back up around the exact same place that was surgically removed. The good thing is, after it’s removed, I have a clean slate with the disease, which means another chance to live better, eat healthier, and prevent it from coming back again.
Dude! You’re going to have a semi-colon!
Seriously, though, have you considered alternatives to surgery and lots of medicine? Have you heard of the “Master Cleanse”? It’s a 10 day detox that cleans out your entire colon (which can have 5-10 pounds of waste that is stuck in there). Many people have reported that diseases like Crohn’s have disappeared completely after doing the cleanse a few times.
Vanita and I are actually on day three right now.
Is it from a Jordan S. Rubin book? He’s the author I’ve read. And yes, I actually have spent a GREAT AMOUNT of money on his detox products, but I haven’t used them yet. In fact, my plan is to begin the detox diet this coming Monday. I’ll see how that goes. The only problem has been that it requires a lot of food that’s hard to find, so I keep putting it off.
Now that I read on it I see that it’s not the same thing… but, I am trying a different detox diet. It’s actually a 40-day program…but if it works, I might know it in a couple of weeks hopefully…
dang, man. hope this does the trick for you. you’ll be in our thoughts and prayers.
in other news… how romantic…the vedenhaupts are cleansing their colons, hand in hand. you two are a model couple.
Seems like I’m always somehow sharing in the Vedenhaupts’ romantic moments
I want on the colon train…..I just eat a lot of beans and hope I don’t bleed that evening. Looks like I’m the in-between of Jacob and the Vedenhaupts.
BTW Jacob, do you curl up naked in the bathtub? That’s what Jim Carey did in Ace Ventura when he found out the woman was a man….so if you burn your clothes and curl up in a ball in the bathtub perhaps it will cure you.
I’ll be praying for you bud….hopefully when I see you next your colon will be a much happier place.
No. The guide we have been using is a book called “The Complete Master Cleanse” by Tom Woloshyn, whose book is based on the work of Stanley Burroughs.
Basically, you don’t eat anything for 10 days except for a magical lemonade and using exotic laxatives. It sounds kind of weird, unless you read the book. (It’s not really magical or exotic.)
Drew…all laxatives are magical…you should know this by now.
Actually, Drew, my diet may be weird even compared to yours. It involves magical dirt that you eat.
With all this magic I think it is only appropriate that you all watch this to learn:
Magical Moments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4
So that didn’t work…
you are the 4th person that I know who has had digestive track problems in the last couple months. it’s got me kinda paranoid. hope all goes well. i don’t envy what you have to go through, but will keep you and your colon in my thoughts.
And that Potter Puppet Pals vid was the silliest thing.
Thanks, Randy! Yeah, it very much a sucky sickness. But that should make me all the more thankful for the recovery.
It IS*