2011...The year of pain

This year started great. I moved to a new position at work, bought a house, and Casey moved in with me. I spent much of my free time working on the house including building a raised garden bed. I was hoping to spend my summer watching the crops grow up and produce delicious foods. Then July came and completely destroyed all the happy thoughts for this year.

In May, I went to the emergency due to pain in my lower right abdomen. The initial diagnosis was a ruptured appendix. Unfortunately, that turned out to be false. The real diagnosis is Crohn's Disease. I started treatment to keep me in remission, but as the I tapered the medication down another flare occurred. On June 30th, I returned the emergency room for four days. The doctors believed that I would get better but wanted to start more aggressive treatments. Eight days later I returned to hospital before any more treatments. Which brings me to my current state. I've been in the hospital for two weeks now and it appears that I will be released in the next week. The problem is I cannot eat or drink anything due to a hole in my bowel. So I'll be on IV nutrition while at home. In six weeks I will get surgery which will hospitalize me for another two weeks with a six week recovery time. I only hope is that I will start to put some weight back on before the surgery. I've lost 30 pounds in the last three weeks. I was already thin, but now I look sickly.

Through all this my number on craving is ice cream. How I long for the day where I can have a vanilla soft serve ice cream cone. I'll settle for a milkshake though. Stay tuned for more depressing blog posts. The most depressing thing, I'm ready to buy an Apple product. Sitting around all the time, and I finally get the point of the Ipad/tablet revolution.