Some time ago I wrote about what I would and would not write about here. I stated that I my intention was to avoid politics and not talk about my health, specifically Crohn’s disease. I really don’t think anyone wants to read about me obsessing about my bowel movements. There’s that apocryphal story of Eskimos having a hundred words for snow. Well I could have the same diversity of vocabulary for my stools. No one wants to read about that.

But events have taken a turn lately and I’ve decided to change direction with them. My reason is that I’ve reached a crossroads where I need to make some decisions about how I treat this annoying companion I’ve had since I was 23. But first a little background.

As I said, I was first diagnosed when I was 23. I had just gotten back to Minneapolis from Northern Idaho, where I’d spent the summer working for the U.S. Forest Service. That fall I suddenly started having nasty diarrhea, that lasted longer than what could be explained by a bad taco. After about six months of tests and doctor bouncing, I finally got a diagnosis. I’ll talk more about that later. Crohn’s is an inflammatory disease of the intestinal tract. It’s an autoimmune condition; in other words you immune system attacks your own body. They don’t know what causes it and there’s no cure. It can manifest itself in various ugly ways, the most common is a really nasty case of the shits, accompanied by painful cramps in the gut. It can also cause inflammation in other parts of your body, including joints and other internal organs, as well as skin rashes. It can even do a symptomatic flip-flop and cause constipation when your inflamed poop chute contracts to the point of obstruction.

I’ve been lucky, I have a pretty mild case. I’ve gone all these years without being needing surgery, being hospitalized or worse. It can kill you. It comes and goes, a few months of remission, a few months of hell. It seems to really like to flare up in the fall. Stress seems to be a factor. Although there are some foods I’ve learned to avoid, diet doesn’t seem to be that much of a factor, but I intend to look into that aspect more thoroughly in the near future.

Three years ago I went into a remission that lasted until a couple of months ago, when it came back with a vengeance. I took my usual “ignore it and it might go away” approach until a couple of weeks ago when I decided I needed to come in from the cold and see my gut doctor. We did the usual drill of making sure it wasn’t some kind of bug and I started a course of prednisone to knock down the inflammation. I’m just starting week three of treatment.

Here’s the kicker. The doc wants me to start taking a more aggressive kind of medication. A new form of treatment referred to as a biologic, specifically in my case Humira. It works by dumbing down the immune system, which somehow just doesn’t sound like such a great idea to me. It has some nasty side effects, not the least of which is poverty. That’s right, poverty; because of something called the donut hole in my Medicare Part D coverage, I figure it’s going to cost me $8000 a year to use the drug. I can put up with a lot of shit for that kind of money.

This is getting a little long so I’m going to continue later. In my next post, I’m going to explore the conundrum presented by the next stage of treatment and my changing views of western medicine, the cost of health care and how I think about my health.