Ramble On

Just a warning: this is a Crohn's heavy entry, I'm talking about poop, and gas here! 


I inadvertently put myself into what I'm calling a mini-flare on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I'm still feeling the effects right now. It's odd, because as of right now my bowel movements are formed, and I only had two bouts of loose stool. The real issue I'm having is joint pain, mostly in my wrists, which is the area that has been the most effected by my disease.

My husband had taken my kids camping, we live in a state park so the camping area is just a short four mile drive from our house. It has been cold lately so he didn't want our 2-year-old staying over night in the tent. I don't camp (I'm allergic to about seven types of tree pollen being in the woods is misery even with medication), so I shuttled her back and forth between the house and the campsite. I showed up Saturday night for a campfire and brought along a 2lb bag of baby carrots, between my dad and I we ate all of them.

Now here's the thing: I've always had issues with carrots. I can eat a few of them with no problems, raw or cooked, but more than a few (and I'm talking more than like 5) I get gas and painful cramping. I don't know how many I ate on Saturday night but by 1 AM Sunday morning I woke up with the most horrible pain I have ever felt in my life. I've given birth three times, twice without any sort of medication, this pain was worse than that. I instinctively felt my stomach to see if there was any swelling, on my right side there was a hard lump. I could feel and see my intestines through my skin, I could literally put my fingers around it. I was so scared. Of course the only person in the house that could come to my rescue was my 2-year-old daughter so I didn't make a noise. After googling bowl obstructions on my ipod and seeing if I could still fart (I could!), eventually I found a position that wasn't too uncomfortable and willed myself back to sleep, the pain had lessened but I was feeling pretty nauseous at this point. Several times through out the night I woke up again, in pain, the mass had moved and it seemed like every time it was trying to "go around a corner" I would have this pain. Finally around 6AM I had a bowel movement, which was completely orange and pretty loose. After that I was able to go back to bed for a couple of hours until the baby got up.

On Sunday I was nauseous pretty much the entire day and my stomach was sore, like I had been doing crunches all night. I had another lose bm that afternoon, again, carrots. I also noticed the my wrists started to hurt around that time. I realized then that I must be having some sort of flare, my crohn's was angry that I got cocky and ate too many damn carrots. I ate very little solid food on Sunday I stuck to smoothies, bananas, water, and tea. By Monday I forced myself to attempt to eat all my calories since I came in about 500 short on Sunday (I just could not bring myself to eat). Monday was okay, I had no bms that day and no gut pain, gas though and wrist pain.  Today, my wrists are still feeling a bit sore but other than that everything is normal, 2 bms today and all formed.

I guess I got too comfortable with the diet and what I could and could not eat. Even though carrots are "safe" they aren't so safe for me personally. This disease is so humbling, you just never know what's going to happen.

As of now I'm completely off of carrots, the thought of them makes me feel sick.