December 2004 Archives

Well, that's all over with then. How was your Christmas? I was given some pretty spectacular stomach cramps so that's always nice.

The trouble is, of course, that Christmas is not just another day, and whatever you were doing or however you were feeling will be filed away in your memory and remembered for next year.

It's not like an ordinary day when you can just go "Bloody hell, that was awful, intestines practically split themselves in two, not going to remember that." You've got no choice.

But oh well. Almost new year - who knows what cunning cures they will come up with in 2005. You've always gotta hope.

In the meantime, while we're in this quiet period before Christmas and new year, all it remains to say is "Happy Bit in the Middle" and I hope you are feeling OK today.

There are many problems for the IBS sufferer at Christmas. First, we are all expected to eat half our body weight in food, despite the fact that a lunchtime sandwich normally leaves us in pain.

Then, there are all the high pressure relatives who decide they know everything about IBS and what we should be doing and shouldn't be doing and how healthy they would be if they were us.

And then, the worst bit of all, in my opinion - the fact that there's no moving Christmas. If you wake up Christmas morning and you feel like seven circles of hell, well it's tough - you get to open presents and eat turkey and watch the Queen like the rest of them.

I dread days like this because you never know how you're going to feel. I'm pathetically grateful if I wake up and feel fine, because then I can actually enjoy myself.

But if I wake up feeling terrible then the fact that it's Christmas, or my birthday, or whatever other jolly time of year it's supposed to be, only makes the whole thing worse.

At least on ordinary days you're allowed to be grumpy.

Anyway, enough of my ranting - I would like to wish all IBS Tales visitors a very happy and prosperous Christmas - may you all wake up and feel great.

Stomach feels a bit dodgy this morning. Nothing major, but enough so as you'd notice.

The trouble with IBS is that you get this a lot - days where you're not sure how your stomach is and you have to carry on doing stuff until either it seems OK or it announces that it will shortly be voiding its contents whether you are near a bathroom or not.

I've often wished for a stronger stomach. You know those people who say "Yeah, I've got a cast iron stomach, I can eat anything"? I wish I was like that.

Imagine - being able to eat anything you wanted, at any time. Imagine being able to go on holiday to wherever you felt like, to go on a plane for 14 hours and arrive at the other end completely untraumatised by your bowel.

It must be such bliss. Except it isn't, of course, because people with cast iron stomachs take their bowels completely for granted - they've never had it any other way.

I tell you, if I was offered a cast iron bowel I would love it and stroke it and never let it out of my sight.

I've been living a gluten-free life now for about four years. If you've never tried to go gluten-free, I would suggest that it's about one zillion times harder than you think it is.

But why, I hear you cry - do people stuff pizza down your throat when you're not looking? Do they bribe you into doughnuts and steal your porch if you don't eat bread?

Well, no. Obviously. But what they do do is put gluten in sausages. Yes, sausages. Not all of them, but enough so's you can't eat sausages ever again without reading the packet.

And crisps. And sauces. And soup. And...well, pretty much everything you can think of. Just about the only things you're safe with, completely, totally, safe with, are the things like apples and lettuce which you know are entirely natural with no added anything.

It's a real drag standing in the supermarket and reading all the little packets. People look at you like you're nuts or they try to shove you out the way. You want to say "I'm doing this not to inconvenience you but to ensure that my stomach doesn't explode on Thursday", but you don't.

It's not an easy life, this.

I've been doing a lot of work on the main IBS Tales website recently.

I often think that IBS Tales is the one positive thing to come out of my IBS. To be honest, I can't think of a single other good thing it's done for me. I suppose I eat far less pizza and chocolate cake than I would otherwise (I've gone gluten-free) but that's hardly something to shout about.

It hasn't brought me inner courage or lion-like strength, in fact it's just worn me down. It hasn't taught me valuable life lessons or shown me the way to inner peace.

But it has given me this website. And that's something, right? And if just a few people read it and think to themselves "Thank God someone else understands", then that'll make it worth the effort.

Eating for IBS is Heather Van Vorous' best-selling diet program, which is based around the differences between soluble and insoluble fiber in food.

If you've never tried her program now might be the time to do it, because she's asking for IBS sufferers to take part in clinical trials.

Any scientifically-conducted trial is to be welcomed, because IBS has been so overlooked by the medical profession in the past. Even today sufferers tell stories of doctors who believe it's a neurotic, self-inflicted condition caused by us all being nuts. If the Eating for IBS trials show good results, they'll be another big step along the way to convincing the medical profession and the world that IBS is a serious condition that deserves attention - and decent solutions as well.

Ah, the good old Christmas season, when everyone gets flu and acts like they're dying when they've been ill for two days.

We good ole IBS sufferers have been ill for years, but do we moan, do we whinge, do we dribble? Well, OK, yes we do, and that's exactly what I'm doing right now, in fact, but I think we have the right.

Anyone with a measly little cold gets sympathy galore, and we get laughed at. Is that fair, I ask you, is that the spirit of Christmas?

I had a nasty few hours yesterday when I was sat there in the office thinking "Shall I go home, no, I can make it, no, I'll go home, no, wait, I can make it." Eventually made it, but honestly - this is no way to live life.