More than just a bag lady

 It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post and during that time I’ve been back in hospital. Over Christmas and the New Year I had that awful flu type bug that seemed to be doing the rounds and then just as I was getting over that my bowel disease thought it would be a good time to kick off. So I’ve basically spent the last 5 weeks in bed.  I’ve been on a reducing dose course of steroids for months now but whenever I’ve dropped below a certain dose all my symptoms return with a vengeance. So in early January I got in touch with the specialist IBD nurses who in turn got in touch with the gastroenterology consultant who said that they wanted to see my in clinic. The next day.  So off I went to the clinic where the Dr put me back up to the maximum dose in the hope that it would control the flare up I was experiencing and I would start to feel better. Sadly, this didn’t happen and I just felt worse and worse so I rang the IBD nurses again almost a week later who said that I probably neede

I’m so fed up. I’m still feeling so poorly and have barely made it out of bed for almost 2 weeks now. I should be used to prolonged periods of time feeling ill and stuck in bed but since being discharged in November I’d felt the most well I had for years and I really quite enjoyed it. So to be back to this, well it’s hit me pretty hard. It’s not just feeling crap from this bug that’s got me down; my bowel has gone crazy. I’m in a lot of pain, going to the loo 20+ times a day and I think it’s because my steroid dose has reduced so I’m going to have to get in touch with the hospital and see if I can put the dose up. Again. According to my original discharge plan I should have been off the steroids weeks ago but whenever the dose gets below 30mg it all just kicks off. I don’t know how long I can stay on the steroids and I know that one of the side effects of long term use is that it affects your bones which is worrying as I already have osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis.  I got a