Next up: G.I. Joe

Two and half decades of heavy reliance on legal drugs of all sorts takes a toll. They are a necessary, but no less shitty, evil. My disease’s greed for medicine has been just that. Besides the permanent joint damage left by years of steroids (cortisone), non-steroidal anti-inflammatory meds like Ibuprofen have killed my gut. It’s a problem that has gotten progressively worse, and is now being treated as inflammatory bowel syndrome. It’s a life-altering complication, one that has grown worse exponentially the last five years.

I worked full-time before getting laid-off in December of last year despite living with this problem. It silently sucks your life. It’s hard enough managing the arthritis without having to visit the rest room up to 20 times a day. Yes, 20 times a day. Not many folks in my world even know of the problem. Let’s face it, it’s an embarrassing one. But it’s one that will be dealt with tomorrow.

It’s brought on even further complications, like kidney failure and chronic kidney stones the size of marbles. That comes from severe dehydration. Emergency room kind of dehydration.

I go in for a long-awaited check of the interior ongoings of the gut. It’s called an enteroscopy, as well as an endoscopy. With hope, and God’s will, the problem will be officially diagnosed and treated. If it is, and I am hopeful that it will be, it will bring a dramatic change for the better in my life.

Yes it will.