This Year's Stomach Flu, Part 2!

Part 1 of the story can be found here.

Spasms and urgency

As I was finishing my tests and waiting for my car to come up from the hospital valet, exhaustion had set in. I was tired of the bearing down for hours upon hours, the shlepping to and from work then downtown to the hospital outpatient lab. Now I had to sit in rush hour traffic to go home. Was I going to be able to make it? Would the spasms be too intense? I had to get home! I remember when I was going through my marathon hospital stay, the doctors would tell me to sit in the bathtub to calm the spasms. The warm water is supposed to calm the spasms down. I remember sitting in the bathroom a few times when I first came home with the J-Pouch. It wasn’t what I wanted to do on a Monday evening, but what choice did I have?

A positive mindset is key

All during the hour drive home, I kept thinking of my pending stool samples and blood work. By the time I got home, I had decompressed and started to think more positive. I was feeling better, and even though the urgency had calmed considerably, I still had a little appetite. I had to start thinking positive because that was the only way that I was going to start to feel better. I had a little bit of soup that evening and went to bed pretty early.

I woke up the next day and felt about eighty percent better. My appetite was better and this is when my nerves started to calm down. As the day went on and the evening came, I was pretty confident that it was a stomach bug, and nothing else. The urgency subsisted and I was improving slowly.  I still was not out of the woods yet, as I was waiting for my doctor to call me with the results.

I finally got the results

For what seemed like an eternity, I finally got the results from my GI doctor the next morning. By this time, I had felt almost back to normal, with a few bouts of nausea. He determined what my hunch was.  There was no growth on the stool samples, and nothing alarming in the blood work. The urgency went away in my pouch and my appetite had returned to almost normal. I had the normal stomach bug!

Happy to have the stomach flu and not something else

Is it weird that I was happy that it was stomach flu? I mean how many people get happy from that? I'd rather have that then some sort of bacteria infection that formed in my gut. I have been there and done that! So as I sit back and type the end of this article, I am reminded of these things.

1. People who have IBD have to be careful when they recognize a change in their body.
2. Follow up with your GI doctor, and listen to any medical advice they give you.
3. Patients with IBD are allowed to get sick, and it has nothing to do with Crohn’s or Colitis. See that third point I made is a “hard pill to swallow.” I don’t know if I will ever get used to just being “sick.’