While this blog is mainly for me to be able to express myself, I wonder if anybody out there will actually read this. My one follower is someone I know - thank you!!

Man, dealing with Crohn's on a daily basis sucks! I wake up in the morning and go to bed at night with bowel habits on my mind. ALL of my underwear have racing stripes and I bleed a lot. My "exit door" is very sore and I cramp all the way through my intestines. For many years, I've had dental issues. I'm not sure of the exact word for it, but my gums are tender and bleed a lot and I'm losing teeth slowly but surely. I take better care of my mouth than a lot of people I know, and my dentist is stumped as to what the problem could be. I'm convinced it's Crohn's. There are no ulcers in my mouth, but there is soreness, and I understand Crohn's affects the entire digestive system, "from mouth to anus." Why wouldn't I blame my mouth problems on Crohn's?

Even the slightest amount of stress affects my Crohn's. Especially when I travel. I went out of town for just one night, and I spent a lot of time on the toilet. No matter how much medicine I took, the cramps wouldn't go away and the urge to #2 was really strong.

By nature, I worry a lot. I can't help it and efforts to change that in the past have not worked. Long ago, I resigned myself to be that type of person: Kind of uptight, and worry about things I probably don't need to worry about, despite the fact that I have calmed down quite a bit. However, in this economy, with my crappy job working with mean people, my drug-addicted sister, another sister who hates everybody and took her kids away so nobody knows where they are (for many years now), we'll probably lose our house we worked so hard for... The list goes on and on. There is SO MUCH to worry about, it's hard not to.