it's between shit and shitter

We spent at least 2 hours at the GI's office this morning and maybe only 10 minutes total with the Doctor. Oh, American medical system - how hypocritical you are.

He wanted to know how I was doing with the Asacol, not good I replied so he suggested immunosuppresants. That's like saying, Doc I'm a little bit itchy, to get the reply - how about we pour acid over your skin?. WTF?

He told me to do research, he said the side effects can be serious and you should find out for yourself. The side effects are fast malignancy in bone cancer that will be terminal before you find out you that even have it. Yay. He said do you still want to have children and when I said yes he said we should do it now (in his office.....kidding) and find an OB. I thought wow this stuff is freaking me out. He said I'll start you on prednisone and do the research on what you want to try next, I thought are you the GI or am I? I remembered that prednisone makes me both nutty and fatter than normal and the being chub makes me depressed. Nutty, chubby and depressed. What a winning combo.

We left the office and I was ok but the delayed reaction meant I had to try to stop crying while driving on a busy road...not quite a winning combo.

So now that I've done the research I think I'm not quite done trying the first line drugs rather than jumping straight to the immunosuppresants. I'll take the prednisone until I'm out of this flare and then try another 5-asa with more supplements and hope that works.

I should name my colon, what's a good name for an angry organ?

books in the bathroom

Today's confession: reading while on the toilet. I do it and have done it since I was about seven and struck down with some kind of terrible childhood stomach bug. Reading took my mind off the explosion that was happening in my guts and since then a good book in the lav is essential for me.

I went through a phase in my early teens when I was extremely germ phobic and the idea of leaving a book in the bathroom to get covered in poop particles totally grossed me out. I was convinced that I would become ill if I read while on the toilet so I desperately tried to break the habit. It worked for a long time and until I started getting the early symptoms of IBD I pretty much never read while in the bathroom.

Last week I started reading 'Mostly Harmless', the last book in the hitchhikers guide series by Douglas Adams. I finished it this morning. I'm a fast reader and it's not the world's longest book but it still made me feel a little sad that I finished it so quickly, given that I only read it while sitting on the bog. I think the last book is the easiest to read, for me the first ones were like trying to read treacle..just too many words trying to say too many different things! I'm still fairly disappointed by the ending though, it's obvious that the whole book is leading up to that moment and when it comes it's a little flat for me. I wish that he had left it open a little bit.

Now I'm reading 'The Andromeda Strain', which I have never read before but I did see the movie a long time ago and was suitably freaked out. Looking back, it's probably a really terrible b-movie kind of thing but when you're 11 they seem far scarier.

I've been taking the Asacol HD for a month now and if anything, my symptoms are worse, not a lot worse but still worse. I actually ran out of it a couple of days ago and I feel like I'm getting better without it but I have a follow up appt. this weekend to test my theory.

nine days of meds, 54 pills

I've been taking Asacol HD (it's a pill, not a television) for nine days now, that's 54 pills. 180 pills a month. That's a lot of pills!

Someone told me that the patent for Asacol is coming up soon, which means that the drug will be available to generic companies which obviously, is a big loss for P&G so they decided to try and market this new kind of Asacol tablet to extend their patent and hopefully get more money out of us. It's funny because the drug in the Asacol HD is exactly the same as the drug in regular Azacol (mesalamine) but at a different dosage per tab (800 mg vs 400mg) and on the box for Asacol HD it says 'not bio-equivalent to Asacol', so you can't just take double the amount of Asacol pills to get the HD effect. Apparently. I'm not a doctor so what do I know, I just smell something fishy.

So far I'm really not seeing any kind of difference, apart from the pill shells mysteriously turning up in the toilet bowl every morning. That's normal because the outside is made from some kind of indestructible acrylic that only degrades enough on the outside for the inside to be dispersed in the colon.

I'm really not sure if it's because I'm paying more attention to my symptoms that I'm noticing more things...or if it's because I have more symptoms. I had actual bend-over-ouch! cramping because of gas in my colon for the first time in years the other day. I've also been experiencing some dizziness which could be due to anemia. My follow up with the GI is in a few weeks so we'll see what he says about that.

I haven't taken the discount card to the pharmacy yet because I haven't had time to think about it with everything that's been going on in my final semester but I'm hoping that the discount card is not a one time only thing and that I can use it again.