Day Seventy One: Healthy

I am trying to be healthy.

My roommate pointed something out to me the other day that really struck a chord with me. Madison, sweet and wonderful Madison, said “You know what’s good is that a doctor told you you’re sick and now you’re taking care of yourself and doing something about it. You’re being healthy” (Paraphrasing because Madison swears like a sailor and is sporadically interrupted by my puppy trying to kiss her to death.)

She is referring to my diagnosis of Crohn’s disease and my decision to take it seriously. Aside from the medication I’m on (which you will hear me bitch about endlessly) I am also now partaking in a mildly sadistic diet. 

When I tell people I’m starting a diet, they get that scared look in their eyes and I can see the word Anorexic? floating around their heads. Yes, I know that at the moment I am functionally a size zero. I am not happy about this. I have to maintain a weight for the medication to work and I am currently almost ten pounds underweight. This is because my body doesn’t process food and nutrients properly.

(Oh my god she’s complaining about being too skinny! How horrible for her! Hey, I have an easy way for you to lose fifteen pounds of useless fat.)

Thus the diet. It maximizes foods my body will be able to process for energy, muscle building and general health. It minimizes things that are hard for my body to process, decrease function and cause my stomach to be upset. Sadly, this means strictly limiting dairy, glutton and fructose. For those of you who don’t know me, I drink milk every day, I adore pasta and Coca-Cola is my main comfort food.

But like Madison said, I am trying to be healthy because I would rather like to keep my colon, thank you very much. I don’t like the idea of pooping into a bag attached to my hip for the rest of my life because I wanted to eat what I want. I haunt the forums for Crohn’s patients and I’m a little surprised at the number who are unwilling to let this disease change how they live. I am horrifically shocked at how many protest that they can still smoke after being diagnosed. While I’m all for people moving forward with their lives after this kind of diagnosis, that doesn’t mean anything if you’re eating, drinking and smoking yourself into an early grave.

I’m going to try really hard to be healthier to keep myself in good shape. Not because of vanity but because of necessity.

Challenge to my Readers:

Be healthy. Listen to your doctors. Go get a physical or a well-woman exam. Thanks to today’s medical technology, if we catch a disease early enough, we can cure it. Sitting on your ass saying “that happens to other people” will not help you.