I don't know about everyone else, but with finals just around the corner, balancing my illness and job interviews, I find myself stressed basically all the time!   Part of me knows that I work better under pressure and stress, but what I never knew, is that being under constant stress can cause both short term and long term problems...which is super not good!


Let's look at short term effects of stress (Stick with me through the technical physiological talk for a minute!):  Stress causes your autonomic nervous system (ANS) to react in a variety of ways.  The two branches of the ANS, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic, have opposite effects on your body, which in healthy circumstances balance each other out.

Everybody has hear of your “flight or fight” reaction when presented with a stressful situation.   Little did you know that when you are presented with a stressful situation, through your ANS your body produces corticoids to help acquire energy from your body and adrenaline to heighten your bodies responses.  This physiological response causes:

• Heart rate increases and heart increases its strength of contraction to pump more blood
• Blood pressure rises
• Digestion slows so the much needed blood may be diverted to muscles
• Salivation and mucous secretion decreases - the result is a "cotton mouth" feeling
• Pupils dilate so that you have a more sensitive vision
• All of your senses - sight, hearing, smell, and taste - become more acute, ready to identify any threat
• Sweating increases to flush waste and to cool down the body
  

This is why some people work better in stressful situations!  Because their body is primed and ready for action, like writing a paper the night before it's due or nailing an interview!

In a person who is at a healthy stress level, after their sympathetic ANS has taken action, their parasympathetic ANS kicks in causing them to relax by decreasing heart rate and relaxing blood vessels.  It's a God given neutralizer to balance your bodies natural responses!

When a person is experiencing a constant high level of stress, their sympathetic ANS is always in drive, causing them to be unable to relax.  When your parasympathetic ANS is unable to take control you begin to experience high levels of stress and your body loses the ability to relax in-between these periods.  

With unhealthy levels of stress, stress becomes “distress.”  As distress related tension begins to build, your body can develop a variety of negative side-effects.  

A recent study showed that “43% of adults suffer adverse health effects from stress.”   Yikes, thats a lot of people!  So what are these negative side effects?  Lets take a look!

Common Effects of stress…
As shown above, too much stress can impact your body causing: 

• Headaches
• Muscle Pain
• Chest Pain
• Fatigue
• Stomach Problems
• Sleep Problems
• Lowered Immune System

Stress can also negatively impact your mood by causing:

• Anxiety
• Restlessness
• Lack of Focus
• Irritation
• Anger
• Depression

Stress can also change impact your behavior causing:

• Overeating
• Under eating
• Anger Issues
• Withdrawal
• Drug and Alcohol Abuse

As you can see your body is primed to respond to stress, but if your body is stressed too often and unable to relax, you can cause permanent negative effects on your body.  So take the time to relax so your body can work properly.  Being a Type A person, relaxing can be difficult for me, and is more of learned skill than a natural occurrence.  However, over time I have learned the importance of taking time to have fun and relax.

So here is me telling you to take time to relax and let your body destress before it becomes distressed.  Because I don't know about you, but I definitely don't need any more stress in my not so normal life!

Why should I care about a disease that does not affect me?  is a question that I know many people often ask.  If they do not have Crohns Disease themselves or know someone who has it, they typically do not see the point in educating themselves on Crohns. 

But after doing an interview with a friend on mine on how he has used the information from my blog to better perform his job, I hope to change your mind and convince everyone that each and every person should learn more about what it is like to live with a Chronic Illness.

Meet Bryan:  "Bryan is a  a financial advisor with serious long term investors. He help his clients achieve their long term goals whether that be paying for college education, preparing for retirement, or living through out retirement. Each solution is created for each individual's needs."

"Your blog does a great job of putting serious issues into a fun educational way to read about." - Bryan

When I asked Bryan how my blog has helped him with is job, he emphasized the "relationship" aspect of his job.   He knows that he does not have a "perfect understanding" of Crohns Disease or any other illness, but having read my blog has given him an understanding that he never would have had before allowing him to relate to people on a more personal level.


"...having a better understand [means] I can talk with individuals and understand some of what they are going through. Although I've never been personally affected by their illness I can relate to people who have through first hand experiences." - Bryan

Specifically, Bryan mentioned a blog post I had written about my ileostomy and the bag I had to deal with.  He mentioned how being educated on this topic had allowed him to connect with one of his customer's whose wife was struggling with her bag.  Once again, although Bryan had never experienced the bag himself, through my experiences expressed in my blog, he was able to build a better relationship with his man! 

"Needless to say I wouldn't have known any of that info if it weren't from reading and learning from you." - Bryan

At the end of the interview, Bryan wrote in his own response providing me with an even more convincing reason why everyone should read some sort of medical blog!  "I think readers can find this information useful as it doesn't just apply for your illness...[by] learning to be accepting of others no matter what they look like or what illness they have." -Bryan

The point Bryan is making is that by taking the time to learn about what it is like to live with a chronic illness, you are making yourself a better person, by setting yourself up to be a better friend.   Being able to relate to those who are going through things you have never been through will facilitate you as you build relationship with those around you.  

"... if you can learn a little bit about their issues that only allows you to be a better friend and a better person." -Bryan

My interview with Bryan was both informative and encouraging.  The goal of my blog is to educate the general population and help those who are suffering from IBD, or know someone suffering from IBD.   His answered showed me the impact I am having on those around me and I could not be more grateful!

That being said, a huge thanks goes out to Bryan for taking the time to answer some of my questions about my blog is making a difference in his life!

Life is a balancing act.  Everyone has to balance their time, money, energy, relationships, and goals.  Everyone's balance looks different depending on what is important to them.   But inherent in the definition of balance is the idea of having a choice of how to balance those resources, meaning that at the end of each day, no matter how one has chosen to spend their resources, there are some left over.

My life with a chronic illness is not a balancing act, it is a puzzle.  It is a puzzle, because I have very limited resources and have to figure out how they fit together each day, in order to get to the end of the day.  There are often very few combination of pieces to get me to the end of the day.  But to make things a little bit harder, the pieces are often damaged.   

My energy pieces are all worn and bent from not being able to eat, chronic fatigue and frequent migraines.  I hoard these pieces, knowing that there is no way to get more of them.   Each day when I look at everything I have to get done, I know that there is absolutely no way that my energy pieces are going to make it to the end of the day.  But somehow I make it through each day.

On the weekends, I will sometimes choose to re-arrange my puzzle pieces to try to be normal and have fun with friends.   What people don't often see, is that I come back, hook up my TPN, and sleep 12 hours and then spend the next day in bed doing homework.  People see a very limited portion of my puzzle and make assumptions about how my pieces fit together.  

To be honest, this is both hurtful and highly frustrating for those of us living with chronic illnesses, because we do our very best to live lives that appear normal, but people sometimes treat us like if we do no spend all day in bed crying and thinking "woa of me" then we aren't actually that sick.

I don't always make my pieces fit, but each and every day, is a struggle to make life work.   I know that most people, see very little of my puzzle on a daily basis and that is on purpose, so I appear "normal" but if you were to take the time to look deeper, you would realize the struggle of living a not so normal life.

I went around campus interviewing people about what they thought Crohns Disease was.  The results were pretty revealing and highly hilarious.  Check out, what these students had to say about Crohns Disease

I feel like writing something that is funny, but I am not really a funny person, and I know that, so instead, I am going to write about things other people have said that are funny!

How am I going to do this you ask?  Well, sometimes people say  the funniest things to me about my Crohns Disease.  Sooo I am going to do a 10 top countdown of the top ten most non thought through things people have said that are also rather hilarious when you think about them.

Top 10 Countdown

10. "So, you stay thin because you have chronic illness?  Man that doesn't sound like a bad deal.  Sign me up"  

9. "Do you ever wish you just weren't sick?"

8. "Well I guess missing two feet of intestines makes you weight less, so don't complain."

7. "You don't have cancer, so you should be grateful"

6. "It can't be that bad..."

5. "Gosh, I wish I could get that much sleep"

4. "You have the diet of a five year old, I'm so jealous!"

3. "I've had the stomach flu, so I totally know what you are going through!"

2. "Man I would kill to be able to eat whatever I want and not gain weight!"

1. And the winner..."I'm sure you are fine!"

Now it's your turn.  Comment with the funniest things people have ever said to you about your Crohns disease!  I'd love to hear what you have to say as Im sure it is similar to my experience with my not so normal life.

When you go to the bathroom as many times as I do a day, you learn some tips and tricks to avoiding potentially embarrassing situations when taking crap.  So here are some of my most prizes tips to to avoiding sh*tty situations in the stall!

Become a Pooping Ninja in Public:

1. The Walk-in-Walk-Out: I can't tell you how many times I have walked into the bathroom to poop and found a group of girls having gossip time in front of the sink.  The last thing in the world I want to do is take a not so dainty poop in front of these gossipy girls, so instead, I walk into the bathroom, assess the situation, and walk right back out.  No harm, no fowl, crisis averted!
2. The Cover Up: Pooping in crowded bathrooms is entirely unavoidable at times.  And usually I don't care about taking a leisurely poop in a crowded bathroom, but if I'm feeling particularly self conscious, I will hold it in till someone flushes, and then let it go.  Its the perfect cover-up!
3. The Double-Check: When walking into the bathroom, I normally subconsciously assess who all is in the bathroom and hope the answer is nobody.  I enjoy pooping in private.  But sometimes I worry I've assessed the situation wrong and get nervous that someone else is actually in the bathroom with me.  In this circumstance, I double-check by checking for feet under the stalls.  

*Disclaimer: Fun fact: Reality:  You are probably never going to see the people in a public restroom again, so who cares if they hear you poop???? Just a thought!

Most Important Part: 

As I have written about before, my number one tip to keeping your sh*t a secret is to use PooPourri  a before you go spritz, that covers up odors! 

Last Thursday I walked to the mailroom to pick up my box of IV nutrition.  When I got there, the box was heavier than normal and my heart sank and my mind started spinning...

            Heavier box = more TPN = No more Food

As my head completed this mental equation my stomach tied up in knots.  I made the trek back to my room, all the while dreading what I was going to find when I opened the box.

Before opening the box, I shoved a brownie in my mouth. I was not going to go on bowel rest without one last hurrah.  Needless to say, I was right, the box had 7 bags of TPN in it, so either it was a mistake or I was no longer allowed to eat.

I sat there looking at the box.  I hate not being able to eat.  It's terrible and you don't realize how much time people spend eating until you aren't allowed to eat anymore.  I knew I should be upset.  I knew I should be devastated that I was no longer allowed to eat for the time being, but instead I felt nothing.  

I called my nutritionist to confirm the change and then called my mom to tell her about the TPN.  Still I felt nothing.  I logically connected the pieces in my head, justifiying the benefits of doing TPN.  

Now that I've connected the pieces in my head, I just have to readjust to not being able to eat again.  I feel bad enough that most of the time it isn't too hard, but I'm also on prednisone, which means I start to super crave food.  Its a rough life and isn't going to be easy, but I really don't have much choice right now.  So instead I keep on keeping on, just this time without food, in my not so normal life