Ah, it’s great to be home. A long lazy weekend awaits and hopefully I should be feeling normal by next week. Right now my legs are as wobbly as hell and I’m alternately exhausted, hungry and exhausted. My medication is fairly potent and leaves my extremities tingling and my stomach upset, but hopefully these effects will settle over the next few days.

It’s a shame my condition isn’t something a little more interesting to discuss– unfortunately it’s one of those "embarrassing" ones which no one likes much to think about. Although I was never planning to go into much detail on it, I think sometimes it’s good to be open about this stuff, especially if it makes other people feel less isolated in their suffering, so I will reveal that my condition is ulcerative colitis… feel free to look it up, but only if you’re not squeamish.

UC can generally be controlled but it can flare up badly as it did in my case, and if you don’t get it seen to quickly it can do a lot of damage to your gut. I had it fairly bad about three years ago, and just kind of avoided dealing with it, becoming reclusive and sickly (tends to lead to other conditions like anaemia, so I was completely knackered all the time). Eventually it went away again after a long slow year of trying different diets and herbs, and then I was clear and apparently healthy from mid 2005. But then this year it came back with a vengeance, and before I knew it I was in hospital trying to avoid hearing any words ending in -ectomy.

So now all the nastiness is being reigned in by a combination of steroids and immunosuppressants, and hopefully eveything will be all tickety boo in a week or two. I know there are a zillion different remedies out there that people will swear by, but the bottom line is that no one thing works for all people– I will experiment when it seems appropriate and try remedies where there is reasonable evidence of effectiveness, but from my own personal experience UC does not show any notable correlation with diet or even stress.

Next post will hopefully not be health related.