Skeet Shares
stuff I find interesting
Saturday, December 16, 2006
I'm so bummed.
Today was what I lovingly call BookBrunch day. Once a month the Table of Contents meets. Our meetings move around to different restaurants on Oahu, and we enjoy good food, catching up with each other's lives and swapping books. The Table of Contents is a group of local members of BookCrossing.com and has been meeting for several years. Our gatherings are one of the few things that can get me out of the house other than work and necessary errands, and it's the highlight of my month. Today was to be extra-special, because it was our Christmas gathering.
I left the house about ten this morning for our eleven o'clock restaurant reservation. It takes about forty minutes to get from my place, way out in the country, to downtown Honolulu. I allowed extra time today because the restaurant we had chosen is in a busy shopping complex and I knew I'd need extra time to find parking among all of the Christmas shoppers.
At 10:30 I was ten minutes away from my destination when IT happened. My belly cramped up. I had a ruptured gut twelve years ago and it left me with a condition called Short Bowel Syndrome. You don't want the details, but my son and I euphemistically refer to it as my faulty containment system. The little bit of food that I do retain does not absorb into my body very well, so I have numerous symptoms resulting from over a decade of malabsorption. My bones ache, my joints are failing, I've lost a lot of teeth and my muscle tone is lousy. I battle dehydration all day every day, my diet is very limited and I have frequent undesired weight loss. When my belly cramps up, I know that my day is over. There is nothing I can do but go home and wait it out.
I took my medication last night and this morning. It's supposed to slow things down in my digestive tract. The amount and scheduling of dosages is as much art as science, and varies depending on dietary intake, level of physical activity and a few other variables. I can't take the maximum dosage because the side effects can be as bad as the original symptoms. So I got it wrong this time and I missed the Christmas gathering of the Table of Contents.
Sometimes my life really sucks. Like I said, I'm bummed.
I left the house about ten this morning for our eleven o'clock restaurant reservation. It takes about forty minutes to get from my place, way out in the country, to downtown Honolulu. I allowed extra time today because the restaurant we had chosen is in a busy shopping complex and I knew I'd need extra time to find parking among all of the Christmas shoppers.
At 10:30 I was ten minutes away from my destination when IT happened. My belly cramped up. I had a ruptured gut twelve years ago and it left me with a condition called Short Bowel Syndrome. You don't want the details, but my son and I euphemistically refer to it as my faulty containment system. The little bit of food that I do retain does not absorb into my body very well, so I have numerous symptoms resulting from over a decade of malabsorption. My bones ache, my joints are failing, I've lost a lot of teeth and my muscle tone is lousy. I battle dehydration all day every day, my diet is very limited and I have frequent undesired weight loss. When my belly cramps up, I know that my day is over. There is nothing I can do but go home and wait it out.
I took my medication last night and this morning. It's supposed to slow things down in my digestive tract. The amount and scheduling of dosages is as much art as science, and varies depending on dietary intake, level of physical activity and a few other variables. I can't take the maximum dosage because the side effects can be as bad as the original symptoms. So I got it wrong this time and I missed the Christmas gathering of the Table of Contents.
Sometimes my life really sucks. Like I said, I'm bummed.
Labels: bookcrossing, Christmas, diet and nutrition, health, Short Bowel Syndrome
7 Comments:
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I hope you recoverd quickly.
Did I ever tell you about how every time Cat and I made plans to go to the movies her tummy troubles would flare and we'd miss it? It's become a running joke for us that if we really want to see something we must not make plans for it but just do it. Although that's much harder now that we live about 6 hours away from each other.
Hyphen8 - you da bes! Looking forward to Mr. Monk!
The above deletion was because I couldn't edit my really bad typing, not because I needed to edit my thoughts. :0)