Living With Crohns Disease

Battling Crohn’s disease sometimes might get to be too much for you to handle on your own. If you’ve had this condition for any stretch of time you’re probably used to the spasms of pain, discomfort in your abdomen, and feelings of nausea on an almost daily basis.

Knowing when something’s seriously wrong - a bowel obstruction, an infection such as diverticulitis, or even cancer - is important. So let this be your little cheat sheet of information for when to hold and when to fold, so to speak.

If you’ve never had to be hospitalized for a condition stemming from your Crohn’s, good on ya mate! That’s excellent, and I hope you never do. But there are times in life when we all have to bite the bullet and give in; realize we aren’t powerful enough to do everything by ourselves.

I’ve been to the hospital for Crohn’s-related garbage probably around half a dozen times. Most of these times were in the weeks and months leading up to my resection surgery, when I was too stubborn to give in and just let them do the operation.

My typical hospital visit goes something like this.

Pain. More pain. It gets to be too much for me to ignore, and then it finally gets to be too much for me to handle. It’s such intense pain that I can barely keep myself from vomiting because it hurts so much.

I drive myself to the emergency room. Sign myself in. Plastic wristband. Wait. Wait some more. Triage. IV with a saline bag on a rolling pole. They shoot me up with some morphine for the pain, a little phenergan for the nausea.

I’m a light-weight, so they give me half a dose of each and I’m still out like a light. In Lala land. I wait some more, get taken into the ER. They put me on a bed and stick me into a room If the hospital’s busy, they put me in the hallway.

Wait. And some more waiting.

The first test they always run is the CT Scan with contrast. I’ve got a page about CT Scans and a page about contrast, check them out on the left navigational menu if you don’t know how these things work.

I drink a radioactive cocktail of ginger ale and contrast. Two big 12- or 16-ounce cups, with ice to keep it cold. The ginger ale’s just there to disguise the taste of the contrast, but I’m so out of from the morphine and phenergan they keep giving me I could be drinking liquid poo and not know it.

The contrast goes down easy; I’m used to it by now. It’s working its way through my system now. Wait for it.

They take me in for the CT. Hey, what do you know? A blockage! Something isn’t working right down there. You don’t say. It hurts doc, gimme more meds.

I get admitted and taken to a hospital room I’m sharing with what seems to always be some old guy.

Wait some more. Drift in and out. Eyes opening and closing, people coming into the room and talking at me. I nod to them, no matter what they say.

You have an intestinal obstruction. We need to put in an NG tube. A tube that goes through your nose into your stomach. Ever had one of those before?

I nod. Yeah. Unfortunately I have.

They do the deed. It hurts going down, feels awful, uncomfortable. They turn on the suction.

Fast forward twenty-four to seventy-two hours. I feel much better! I can’t wait to get out of this hellhole! What did I ever come here for in the first place? I’m perfectly fine…

Okay people, back to reality. My hospital dramatization is over. The fact is, with any kind of obstruction, rupturing, or hemorrhage, you need to get to the ER fast. If the pain hurts too much to sleep, like you literally can barely stand it, that’s a good indicator. Never just try to ignore it and hope it goes away.

At the same time, don’t jump at the first sign of trouble either. Give it some time to see if the pain stays there. If it stays or gets worse, you need to get on the road.