Greetings friends and acquaintances. I haven’t shared much about my health lately. So I thought I’d post an update. (To recap the key points: 🗓 Diagnosed with ulcerative colitis on 9/24/14, failed a bunch of big name meds 💊, underwent a colectomy with permanent ileostomy 🔪 on 10/31/19, underwent a proctectomy on 5/6/20.)
😃 The good news: While I’ve been dealing with my ulcerative colitis flares, surgeries, and such in the past several years, I’ve concurrently struggled with my weight, due in part (in my opinion) to one particular medication. In 2019, while on Xeljanz, I peaked at my highest weight ever. 📈 Well here’s the good news so far for 2021: I’m down 15 pounds so far this year and I’m down a total of 30 since my all-time high in 2019! 📉 Now if I could just get some energy so I could get back into the gym with more regularity. 🏃♀️
🤬 The not-so-good news: In recent months, when people have asked me how I’m doing, I say “better than I’ve been in years!” Well, in the last month or two I started feeling that I was lying whenever I said that. 😴 I also have come to the realization that the frequent tiredness I’ve been experiencing is what I call “medical fatigue” and not laziness. 🛋 Health-related fatigue isn’t something that you understand unless you’ve experienced it… sleeping doesn’t help, energy drinks don’t help, a shower seems like an insurmountable feat, you fall asleep at your desk without warning, and you just can’t muster the give-a-damn to do much. 🛌
Finally accepting that something wasn’t right, I made an appointment recently with my local primary care physician. 👨⚕️ He’s a great doctor - he gets me and my humor, he knows that I know my body, and he’s super-thorough! It’s great to have such an excellent doctor who believes in you when you go in with seemingly no “tangible” symptoms. You kind of feel like a hypochondriac sometimes, but Dr. M. knows better and ordered a wide array of lab work. Well, the results confirm my suspicion that something isn’t right with my immune system, so it’s good to know I wasn’t imagining things. For now, I’m starting a short round of prednisone 💊 to help the symptoms in the short term and will be seeing a rheumatologist at the University of Chicago as soon as possible. 🏥
