When are you having a flare?
Here is a video with me speaking the text from below, feel free to watch it or read the full story underneath.
That’s a difficult question right? Well, maybe not really. If you are taking 1-2 craps/day and then all of a sudden move towards 4-10, I think most of us would consider that a colitis flare. But lets say you are lucky enough to have gotten over your flare and things are going pretty good, like 1-3 bowel movements per day. Then all of a sudden you have a pretty horrible bowel movement out of “nowhere”. Is that a flare? I guess it depends on what happens the later on that day or night, and the next few days etc…
For me, I have been doing the 1-2 nice craps per day for weeks. BUT, I just finished a NASTY one. I call them ass-tasrophies. That’s right, good old Adam here preaching that everything is going just great(if you’ve been reading other pages on this site) has just had a nasty one. No blood at all, but definitely nothing hard in the stool or bowl for that matter. So let me tell you the rest of the story. Its pretty interesting if you are not repulsed so far, and please realize right this moment that the nastiest parts of this post are over I think.
Today, I met a good friend Jackson for lunch. He is actually taking Humira for his arthritis(strange ain’t it, I took Humira for my ulcerative colitis, and right after I started having arthritis problems…) Anyways, we went to a restaurant called Boulettes Larder(not important) in San Francisco. Its down on the Embarcadero which is one of the main drags right next to the water. It’s in the Ferry Building, and if anyone who reads this site is in San Francisco, feel free to email me and I will be happy to take you there too, my treat. Just one thing, I surely won’t be eating what I had today with you.
Here it is, this is what both of us ordered: “Braised Pork Shoulder” with seasoned seaweed, broccoli, mushrooms, organic short-grain rice
Nothing here is too bad as far as my diet is concerned, I definitely don’t eat much rice, so thats the one obvious no no. But there is more to the story. This restaurant serves Acme bakery bread and sweet butter, and that stuff is free and on the tables… So you are probably guessing what good old Adam did for lunch today. That’s right, I took a few pieces of bread, and made them into spoons and dug out a ton of sweet butter yada yada yada. Of course my buddy was asking me if it was OK to eat the bread. My response, “Not really, but this won’t kill me”
RIGHT AND WRONG
I am not planning on dying tonight from breaking my diet and having a few pieces of bread and some rice. But I can confirm, the toilet bowl just looked pretty bad, and the nastiest work I have done in the bathroom in a few months now. What do I think was the deal, the bread along with the rice was a bad combo for me, period. Am I 100% positive, hell no, but was it the first time I had a decent quantity of bread in a long time…YES.
So, whats the point of this post? Well, I am not trying to say that I have figured out the ulcerative colitis gods. Not at all. I am not trying to tell anyone to never eat bread. Not at all. And nobody even has to pay any attention to this idea ever again. Those decisions are up to all of us to make. Nobody has ever forced me to eat anything(save a few nasty brussel sprouts when I was a little kid) and everything is a choice when it comes time for meals. I surely learned a nice little lesson in the bathroom several hours after lunchtime. Its a colitis mistake I will probably make hundreds more times before I die, and yes, its a common case of will power and knowing what’s good and whats not for the body. Ulcerative colitis in my opinion is not an emotional decision maker. It works 24/7 at least it does within me. When I keep it locked down and asleep, I win. When I let act up after eating things my body can’t handle….it wins.
I have thrown the idea out there a few times. Here it is. For a few weeks, I start eating like I used to eat. Burgers, pancakes, bagels&cream cheese, Flour tortillas, cookies, all that stuff. And see what happens. If the blood does not start flowing, if I don’t start killing whales in the toilet again, maybe this diet idea is totally a made up game. And maybe all of my doctors were right saying diet has nothing to do with ulcerative colitis. BUT, if the colitis flare comes back, and all the symptoms start ruining my life once again, is it then time to start renting full pages of the WALL STREET JOURNAL saying: “DIET IS DAMN IMPORTANT COLITIS PEOPLE!”
So maybe today was my first mini mini flare. I know many of you are having full blown flares right now, but please realize, it happens to all of us, and soon enough you will get relief. And then you will be doing what I am doing, and preaching whatever got you better to everyone. And lastly, if you haven’t read the book ‘Breaking the Vicious Cycle” please read it. There is a darn good chance it will change your life like it has mine. I put a link on the right side of this site to it for everyone. Am I promoting it? You fricken bet I am. I would rub whoever wrote the books dirty stinky feet each night if they lived close by.
More information about the SCD diet can be found here: The Diet
I started site shortly after being diagnosed in October of 2008 with severe pancolitis (when my whole colon was inflamed).
For me, it was a very rough start with severe symptoms. Getting bounced from medication to medication was not easy or too helpful. But, I did meet another UC’er, changes several parts of my diet, and of course the rest is history.
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I’ve written 2 different ulcerative colitis ebooks, you can check them out here.
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