I'm going to get very personal tonight. March 1 will be my one year anniversary of being off Prednisone. That is a long time for me, you see, over 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC). With UC, you go in and out of remission just like some cancers. They do not know the cause of UC, and they say there is no cure (I beg to differ), and everyone has different triggers. Mine seems to be more Stress related and sometimes diet related. Cucumbers and I no longer have a happy relationship. UC is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy! Here is the part of the story if you are weak in the stomach might want to skip the rest of this paragraph. I didn't have normal bowl movements, they were mainly blood and mucus, and if stool did come out it was covered in mucus. Farting? I couldn't or I would have to find new underware. You take farting for grantited until you loose that ability. Sometimes there is nothing like a good fart. When you have UC, there is also an urgency of getting to the bathroom in time without having an accident in your pants. When you go out to a store, restaurant, etc, you first scoped out where the bathroom is and if they didn't have one I usually didn't shop there because going to a store seemed to trigger a bowl movement or should I say the runs! WalMart was the worst store to have to visit the bathroom, because like I said earlier when you first feel the pang that you need to go you better be like five steps from the bathroom. It seemed like every time this feeling hit me I would walk as fast as I could with my butt cheeks as tight as I could get them, and high tail it to the closest bathroom and low and behold that one was closed for cleaning. This is where the praying came in, I then would have to start Lamaze breathing and run to the back of the store to the other bathroom praying all the time that I wouldn't fart and that they wouldn't have this bathroom closed too. I now call this the Walmart trott! These flare ups were pretty regular. I flared more than I didn't. I'm allergic to the medicine that they give for colitis so that's where the prednisone comes in. I was then put on high doses of Prednisone. They would start me of on 40mg a day until the bleeding would stop, this usually took anywhere from 2-4 weeks, then they would start decreasing the dosage by 10mg every week until I would get down to 1mg. If I started bleeding again during any of this time, they would up the dose to the previous dosage until the bleeding stopped again, then start decreasing again. This whole process sometimes took 3-6 months. I knew I was better when I could fart again. I usually stayed flare up free for 1-3 months then it would start all over again. The Prednisone made me hungry so I constantly was eating and over the course of one years gained 40lbs. I would loose a little weight during the off Prednisone times only to gain it all back the next time I was on it. It would also make my heart race and skip beats and I couldn't sleep unless I was taking sleeping pills. Bitchy! Don't get me started there! There were times that if I had a gun, I could literally kill someone, heck who needed a gun, I could have used my bare hands! I was constantly angry and I hated myself for this. So I was getting angry at everyone, angry at myself and FAT! I even ended up in the hospital one time because of a severe flare up. When you are on Prednisone your immune system is so weak. It's weird that it helps one area but makes other areas weak. I would catch everything under the sun. Also it seemed like every time I was on Prednisone I would get MRSA somewhere, this is a very serious staff infection. Last time it was on my lip and now I don't have feeling in part of my lip. The good news to all this? I'm off Prednisone and I'm not planning on going back on them ever, and I say God has healed me!
Back when Sean and Courtney first started doing CrossFit and eating Paleo, I actually starting making a few changes in my diet too. I also started drinking the Kagan water. I started noticing I wasn't having any symptoms. As I told you earlier, stress plays a major factor with my flare ups and my daughter was getting married over the summer and I thought that the stress of this would cause me some issues but it didn't. I also lost about 10lbs with just eating a little better and drinking this water. After the wedding though I started letting my bad habits come back, I stopped eating good, ate junk food, and stopped drinking the water. Christmas came and oh boy the sweets I was eating. I Gained back about 5lbs and I started noticing blood and mucus again. That's when I decided that I'm not going on prednisone again. I knew I felt better when I was eating right and drinking the good water, that's when I decided I've got to do the Paleo thing full time, and drinking the Kagan water. I have now been strictly Paleo for 10 days, I know this isn't very long, but I've noticed a difference already. I don't get to drink the Kagan water like I want to, but I'm in the process of purchasing a machine for my house. All of this is why I started blogging, it is to hold myself accountable so I don't slack back into unhealthy living! Sorry you had to read all this poop, now on with my day today!
Food for the day:
Spark drink at 6am, then at 8am I ate 2 boiled eggs and drank my ucky fiber drink and two glasses of water.
Lunch salad topped with bacon bits vinegrette dressing
Snack apple and a handful of nuts
Dinner stuffed acorn squash and side salad. I made a meatloaf inside acorn squash halfs and cooked until the squash was tender. One dish baking. My kind of dinner!
Exercise for the day:
Couldn't make it to Owasso for CrossFit, so this is what I did from home:
50 squats, 50 sit ups,50 push ups, 50, 20lb kettle bell swings.
I'm planning on coming to Owasso tomorrow as we are out of water , somIm killing two birds with one stone, water and exercising. I will be taking Thursday totally off from exercising because I'm having my hands injected for arthritis, so I'm considering it a rest day. I'll probably go for a walk or something along that line. As I said earlier about my UC, I've got to give God the glory for healing me and directing my paths to better fitness and lifestyle. I may have an occasional symptom but that's all it's ever going to be. Just a symptom! I claim
Healing in the name of Jesus! Well until tomorrow, good night And God Bless!
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