For Science!

So this week I was debating going to seminar, because the email said it was about salmonella and metals and I am not terribly interested in infections bacteria-based disease. But then I went because I had to be on that side of campus anyway, and I am so glad I did.

( Guts Under Here )

Today is the eighth day of the Omer, which is one week and one day into the Omer.

There is a local support group for Crohn's/Colitis. MW went to the meeting last month, and pestered me into going this month. I did not feel that I would like it, but actually it was not bad. I am not sure I will go again, though. These people were those who had had serious internal bits removed - as in, all of the colon, on some of them. Compared to them, my little shot once every two weeks is nothing, and I felt a little like I didn't belong. They also kept talking about the importance of being positive and not feeling sorry for oneself, but I never did; I was diagnosed on a Tuesday and by Friday I was tired of people giving me sympathies instead of just letting me take my meds and get on with my life.

Finally, MW (who found them) is the kind of person who needs people to talk at, usually at volume into the phone in her annoying on-the-phone voice, but I am not. Talking annoys me, as does background music and anyone who feels the need to leave the TV on for noise. In addition, people annoy me, usually by thinking more slowly than I do*. Sometimes by thinking stupid things, like "if God wants her to live than she will" rather than "if God didn't want her alive we wouldn't have things like hospitals and penicillin." Anyway. Unlike MW, I'm not someone who needs a lot of people, so a support group is kind of superfluous.

Besides, I decided on day one that I was not going to live my life around this disease; I was going to master it and live my life regardless of it. Going to a support group, especially when I don't need it, seems kind of . . . living around Crohn's instead of beating it. So even though it was not a bad experience, I really don't know that I'll go again.

*Not that they are less intelligent than I, because lots of them are brilliant professors. Nor that they know less than I, because lots of them know things I can never hope to understand. They just don't process information as quickly, and time lag it takes for people like that to catch up with me is too short for me to do anything useful while at the same time being long enough to notice. So. Damned. Annoying.

So maybe I ought to post.

I'm not sure what to post, aside from saying that in research-land we managed to get some green (!!) nanoparticles. Green is good - other people have managed to get them but whether they are gotten is kind of hit-or-miss, and we think we have figured out why. Consistently getting green is, like, the holy grail of this type of research. Next up: bovine hemoglobin (which is essentially the same chemical as human hemoglobin but, for obvious reasons, a gajillion times cheaper).

In ficland, I have been writing an xxxHolic AU, but it is veeeeeery slow. Mostly is is slow because finding primary sources on Edo Period, just pre-Meiji Restoration, Japan is very difficult. If anyone has such sources I would be quite grateful.

I'm also still writing stuff in Khemet, but it is very difficult. Set is an uncommunicative bastard, in addition to being a massive ball of Issues. He is probably going to get into a screaming argument with Horu about this. Ise is, of course, not helping; fortunately, other gods will . . .

And Carebear has gotten herself on a Rorschach trip, which means I went back and reread Watchmen so as to be able to RP with her. I had forgotten how depressing it was. I think my Dan is a little too intellectual, but Rorschach is pretty much all instinct, so they balance. 9I love the way his name is pronounced RAW-shock, it's so him.) I may be turning those into a fic, it depends on how she feels about it.

And in horrible ick news, I believe I have stopped responding as much to the steroid drugs. The abdominal pains are back,at least. I shall ask Dr. BZ about it when I go home for the weekend. I hope I'm okay :

My general physician, Dr. F, is fantastic. But the on-call doctor when I had the colonoscopy, Dr. B, needs to work on his bedside manner a leetle. However, since he was the on-call doctor, he's who I got. Fortunately, Dr. BZ, whose house we will be living at for a few weeks while JJ finishes high school, is an intestine doctor*. Even more fortunately, he specializes in Crohn's, and in fact I am his somewhat-over-two-thousandth Crohn's patient.

I went to go see him today. He said I have textbook Crohn's, which is good in the sense that what medical regimen I should be on is well-known. Not so good in the sense that my chances of gastrointestinal cancer just shot up four hundred times, but I'd rather know than not know.

He took me off the Pentasa (yey!), and is instead putting me on a drug called Imuran. Imuran is an immunosuppressant, so it will drop my body's ability to fight infection somewhat. On the other hand, it will also drop my body's ability to fight itself. On the whole, slightly longer common cold recovery time > horrible constant gut-bleeding. Unless I prove to be allergic to it, which happens to 5% of the population. One of the few times I'm hoping not to roll a natural 20.

Current pill count: 15 a day.

He also had his people suck some more blood. I psychically predict that the result will be thus: I am still anemic, but less anemic than I was. Because eating 900% of my daily iron requirement each day has to be doing something.

Finally, he says in a month we're going to start weaning me off the Entecort. This is because Entecort is a steroid, and steroids are not just responsible for 'roid rage. They will seriously Fuck You Up if you stay on them for very long, so once we're sure it has done it's stop-attacking-healy-job, I'll be dropping it. (Horrible Dr. B said this as well.) At which point I will be taking a manageable five pills a day, all at breakfast.

So it looks like this horrible thing of utter ick will end up being a background concern after all, and MW's insistence on trying to talk to me about any of it was not only unwanted but totally unnecessary. Such is my life . . .

*There's probably a fancy word for it, but that is what he is.

( Personal Information and Rant Under Here )

Huff, huff . . .