Hey Liver, Why Are You Upset With Me?

I have a horrible habit of not keeping up with new posts, and for that I apologize.  I will not promise it won't happen again, and I would almost go so far as to say that I promise it will happen again...  Living with chronic illnesses has taught me the greatest life lesson, and that is to live in the present.  I take the good days when they come, and crash on the bad days knowing it's not the end of the world.  I started a new job a few months back, and I absolutely love it.  Much less stress than my previous job, which was contributing to increasing numbers of bad days.  I loved my old job too, but sometimes you have to find something that you and your body can love equally.  And, while I tried to use mind over matter, my body has a habit of winning because it just stops working!  So, career change (for the time being), better health, happier Kate.

As you may know from reading older posts, in addition to having Celiac Disease, I also have Crohn's Disease.  It's a "special" combination.  Dealing with Celiac is nothing in comparison to the Crohn's.  But the Celiac is probably the reason why my Crohn's doesn't stay in control for more than a few months at a time.  They feed off each other.  While I'm 100% gluten-free,  (Gluten-containing foods rarely even enter my house!) my innards were pretty damaged from years of living undiagnosed and attempting to soothe my upset insides with the typical plain pasta and toast and other things that I now know are poison.  So, even though I never "cheat" (really who in their right mind would ever intentionally cheat on a gluten-free diet?), I probably will never fully heal because of the Crohn's & its inflammation.  This is all to say that the medications that typically would help someone with Crohn's have trouble with my body because of the malabsorption.  So, I've been on immunosuppressants for over 5 years now--with the occasional addition of prednisone.

Immunosuppressants are interesting, because I rarely notice if I have a cold.  We know when we have a cold because of our immune systems' response, which are what produces the symptoms that help to rid the body of the invading germs.  When your immune system is suppressed, it doesn't react as much, which means that instead of getting colds more often, you get them less often because you just aren't bothered by the sneezing and runny nose and coughing.  Tired though? Yes.  I mean, the body is being attacked without proper defense -- of course it would be tired.  When I get sick, it just takes longer to show up if it doesn't fizzle out first on its own.

What's amazing though, is that if I do end up sick, it almost always hits my liver.  I have been trying to figure out why this is the case because it's really frustrating to have a cold and then have horrible pain spasming from my liver.  That's not what most people get with a cold.  Trust me, I've asked.  Since I can't take cold medicines, I think it has something to do with the fact that I drink more tea that contains several ingredients which are also used to promote liver detox and my liver is reacting like, "Hey, why now? I'm trying to exist peacefully while there are battle raging throughout the rest of you, and you're going to disrupt me?"  (Yes, all of my organs talk to me.  If you have chronic illnesses, you probably know what I mean...)  For now, that's what I'm going to give myself as the reason for the liver pain.  If I come up with a new theory, I'll let you know.  My doctors don't know why either :-)

Here's To Good Health!
Kate