In the early days of this blog, I wrote about my perceived overprescription of opioid painkillers, how chronic disease fits in there, and why doctors often don’t have much choice in the matter. It turns out the CDC thinks the same. “More than 40 Americans die each day from prescription opioid overdoses, we must act now,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “Overprescribing opioids—largely for chronic pain—is a key driver of America’s drug-overdose epidemic. The guideline will give physiciansRead more
Posts filed in: surgery
Kate Keen Photography- an Interview
Today, I have the honor of featuring an interview with photographer Kate Keen. She is a Bournemouth-based photographer, who also suffers from Crohn’s. I came across her work through the #getyourbellyout group (check them out on facebook). On her website she is featuring a series of pictures of Crohn’s and Colitis patients, proudly and defiantly showing their scars. As she is in England and I am in Portland, I sent her my questions. Here are her answers: A general questionRead more
What to wear…. with a transrectal drain and other Tipps
As I wrote in a previous post, I had a huge infection after my first two surgeries, that required two more surgeries, in which they extracted about a liter of pus, washed me out and tried to get the environment as sterile as possible. In spite of targeted intravenous antibiotics, I kept developing abscesses in my stomach. This is apparently not unusual- I mean, my stomach perforated, all the bacteria had new room to grow, and my body was ratherRead more
Surgery- Take one and Two
On January 23rd, 2015, my husband and I had dinner. It was a regular friday night, we had had take-out from our favorite Thai place. We were talking about whether I had taken the laundry out of the dryer, or still needed to. “You know, we need more excitement in our lives, if it’s Friday night, and we are talking about laundry.” I, of course thought about going out, having fun, a little bedroom action- whatever. Five minutes later, IRead more
