A Life with Ulcerative Colitis - Part 4

 Happy days are here again

After 10 months, I was finally free of medicines. More importantly, I was free of any UC symptoms. Things were looking brighter. I slowly started my walks; while I was not comfortable walking in the mornings, my walks in the evening were wonderful. I would put on my shoes, get my headphones and start listening to a discourse by Velukudi. A 30 minute walk to the beach, 30 minutes sitting on the water line looking at the waves and a 30 minute back home was pure bliss. Slowly the total time extended to 2 hours with me walking between 8-10 km. After a month or so, I started running again. Yes, running after almost after one year. This was a huge plus for me - my mind started getting better and fitness improved. 

After 2 months, I completed my first self timed 5 km run in  more than one year. This was a huge achievement for me. It was like I found my mojo back. Slowly over the next 2 months I started running daily. My interest towards life got better. I went out to eat a few times. I even started singing in my shower 🤣😁 (btw, I think I am next only to SPB / KJ Yesudas when I sing in my shower) 

Everything was going fine, but little did I realize life had a surprise in store for me.

One fine morning, my mother had a fall. The dr after seeing the X-rays, told us that she had a fracture in her vertebrae and has to be in complete bed rest for next 3 months. The next 3  months, I brushed up my cooking skills, more importantly understood my kitchen cleaning abilities  🤣. The only thing that I was happy for during this 6 months was that my health was normal. After 3.5 months of kitchen duty, my mother limped back to the kitchen, literally but within next 2-3 weeks she was once again the Queen of the Kitchen relieving me of cooking duties. I have to say one thing here - my mother’s patience and ability to tolerate things - she had to eat my cooking  for over 3 months 🤣🤦‍♂️☹️.

During these 4-6 months, I stopped my evening walks. I was always beside her to take care of her. One thing became sure during this period - MOTHERS ARE LIVING GODS. I realized how much care, affection and sleepless days and nights she had put in take care of my when I was a baby, or a young kid, or sometimes being an ill adult. It took another 3-4 months before I was comfortable to leave her alone to restart my walking. 

By the time I restarted it was almost 10 months since I was completely free of medicines. I started with vigour again. But the illness came back again. This time with higher intensity. The flare up was bad. So bad, that for the next 2-3 months, I left home only to visit my dr, or go for some diagnostic tests.

What did my latest flare up do to my new found happiness and confidence? Did it dent these? How did I cope with these. More later.

A Life with Ulcerative Colitis - Part 3

As I walked out after consulting with my dr, I thought that life would be easy, now that I had medicines for 6 months. I thought keeping myself stress free, along with the medications will cure my symptoms and get me into remission quickly. Also, having seen my late father with arthritis I thought this autoimmune disease was manageable. Little did I realize it was easier said than done

The first few weeks with my new medication did not bring in any change. I still had blood in my stools, had to visit the toilet multiple times in a day. My mornings were bit stressful, as I was always had the feeeling that my bowels were not completely emptied and therefore could not leave the comfort of my house. Prior to being diagnosed with UC (Ulcerative Colitis), i was a regular runner, having run several 10 km races. I used to run 4-6 days a week. Now I could not go out for run because i was not sure when I will have to visit the toilet. The first casualty in the long list of things that I loved doing was running. Little did I realize that this was the first among the long list of things that i would miss doing / or lose in the years to come.

It took me nearly 3 months to stabilize a bit. By the end of 3 months, the bleeding had stopped. My biggest worry of that point in time had come to an end. Cutting a long story short, it took another 6 months for me get control over my bowel movement and for it to regularize a bit. As a corollary of my condition, my dr warned me that I can never be constipated and had to drink 4-5 litres of water every day. I used to drink 2 litres a day, and my dr wanted me to at least double it. He wanted me to start my day drinking 1 litre of water on empty stomach. Wow, the first few weeks of starting on this new regimen of water consumption, i would have spent more time in the toilet than on my couch, especially in the mornings as I could not hold my bladder.. 😁😁🤣

After about 9-10 months, most of my symptoms had gone and dr said I can stop medication for now. I was extremely happy. But he warned me that the situation can become bad any time. This disease is like burning embers, it can become a fire anytime were his words. I was not concerned about any of this at that point in time. After 10 months, it was like a new found freedom. I started my running again. I wanted to better my previous personal best for a 10 km race. I started eating out a few times. The next few months, I was a like a prisoner released from jail. Happy. Not bothered by illness. A free bird.

I even managed to run a 5 km self paced race after 10 months. That gave me the confidence that better things were in store for me. 

But did it last long? Guess, I was not ready for a diffent kind of surprise that life as about to throw at me. More on that later. 

A Life with Ulcerative Colitis - Part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about the initial days of my illness and the diagnosis. Well things were not all that easy as I mentioned.

When I noticed the first symptoms, blood in stool, I was a bit scared. Then, when I had to rush to the toilet several times a day, I was getting concerned. Blood and mucus in the stool, is something that I was not used to seeing. Initially when my Dr told me it could be due to an infection, I was kind of satisfied that it’s something that will go away shortly.  But when days started to become weeks, but still no signs of symptoms of going away, i was getting jittery.

After 3 weeks, when my gastroenterologist asked me for family history and if any one had suffered from any form of IBD (Irritable Bowel Disease), I said no but an uncle colorectal cancer. When I saw the look on his face change, and he immediately suggesting me to get a colonoscopy done, that’s when I thought something was serious. I asked him, if it was anything to be worried, he said no but just get the test done immediately.

As I had mentioned yesterday, the preparation of the test was something unimaginable. Even in my bad mood, I will not think of this for my worst enemy. On the day of the test, the surgeon said he will give me a mild general anesthetic I was thankful that my brother had accompanied me. Thambi udayaan padaikku anjaan. By now, my mother was afraid to send me alone to dr and had my brother accompany me on all dr visits 🤣🤦‍♂️

Finally, after knowing that i did not have cancer and with a big weight off my chest, we (remember, my brother was accompanying me) visited my gastroenterologist once again. The dr went through the test reports in detail. He was happy that it was not cancerous but said that it was a bit of concern that it was Ulcerative Colitis.

He said that this disease is an autoimmune disease and there is no cure. He explained in detail about it. Since my father had arthritis, i knew what autoimmune disease was. He said that the symptoms will keep appearing once in a while and I will have to be on medication for prolonged period of time. He sad stress alleviates the symptoms and asked me if I was having stress at my work. I just laughed it and said I was happily retired for almost 3 years. He said may be that itself was stressful. He then asked me if I was doing pranayama and gayathri japam daily. When i said no, he said if you were doing these, you will not have got this condition and advised me to do meditation for 30 minutes daily after writing a prescription for 6 months 😁😁😁 He said he meditated for 1 hour daily that keeps him stress free. 

He told me there will be periods when symptoms will be very bad (flare up) and when things will be normal (remission). So, be prepared. I still remember my brother’s comment, i thought we were coming to a dr instead looks like we met a lifestyle guru.

As we were walking out, I thought I was prepared to face this condition. But was I?

More later…

A Life with Ulcerative Colitis - Part 1

Part 1

About six years ago, in mid April 2015, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. The day the test results came and I met my gastroenterologist was a BIG turning point in my life. I didn’t know so then.

First, a bit of medical terminology from Webmd

What Is Ulcerative Colitis?

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory bowel disease. It causes irritation, inflammation, and ulcers in the lining of your large intestine (also called your colon).

There’s no cure, and people usually have symptoms off and on for life. But the right treatments can help you keep a handle on the disease.

Ulcerative Colitis Causes and Risk Factors

Ulcerative colitis happens when your immune system makes a mistake. Normally, it attacks invaders in your body, like the common cold. But when you have UC, your immune system thinks food, good gut bacteria, and the cells that line your colon are the intruders. White blood cells that usually protect you attack the lining of your colon instead. They cause the inflammation and ulcers.

The main symptom of ulcerative colitis is bloody diarrhea. There might be some pus in your stools, too.

How did it start for me?

Well one fine day, I found blood in my stools. I got a bit flustered and went to my Dr. He prescribed some antibiotics and asked me to come back after a week. Bleeding continued after a week, and he advised me to see a gastroenterologist. Physical examination followed by more medicines for 2 more weeks. Still no cure. He referred to another dr to get a colonoscopy done to examine my large intestine . The colonoscopy was a 20 minute diagnostic procedure, but the preparation was the height. I was given a powder to be mixed with 2 litres of water and drunk in 2 hours. I was told that it would cleanse my entire digestive tract. Little did I know, that it will be like PKS (movie) Abbas getting a stomach wash - nenjula irukara manja soru mothamum vanthurthu 🤣🤣🤣. I was like, will there anything be left to diagnose, especially if my large intestine is going to come out. Next day, post colonoscopy, the dr said give this sample for biopsy to test for cancer. I was shocked. The results they said would come after a week… 

The next week was a killer. I couldn’t sleep at nights dreading the results. Thankfully, after a week, I got my results saying no cancerous cells. I took these reports to my gastroenterologist and had a long discussion with him. He said I had Ulcerative Colitis, an autoimmune disease and enquired about family history. I said my dad had arthritis, another autoimmune disease and an uncle had passed away due to colorectal cancer. He said he will start me on medications immediately. Initially, he said, he will give me medicines for 6 months, but I need to see him every 2 months. First few months were ok, but then fun started later on.

More on this later…

2021 & Beyond - Good Health

Good Health is my first priority for 2021 and beyond.

I will start with physical health. Over the last several years, I understood that certain aspects of health were not under my control. 2021 made me realize that fully. So, I just told myself that “ to become and staying happy”, I just need to set aside the things that were not under my control. After this became a lifestyle mantra, other things started to follow easily.

My plan for good physical health started with good eating, sleeping and physical activity. 

Good diet was not much of a problem, given that I could eat or should not eat was governed by my doctor. Therefore the focus turned on to eating on time or rather not eating at untimely hours. Starting November, I slowly started to get this into some bit of control. I started following some of the things that I was told earlier by either my Pranic healer or by a nutritionist. My Pranic healer used to say that its very bad to drink coffee or tea first thing in the morning, as both these (especially coffee) are highly acidic. He advised me to drink a glass of warm or chilled milk first thing in the morning and drink my coffee after 45-60 minutes. I started this on a daily basis. Also, due to realignment of my medications, was forced to have breakfast around 8 am. While I have not seen much of a benefit in the short time, I think this will definitely lead to an improvement over a period of time.  

The next focus was on physical activity. I used to run a fair bit before May (including during lockdown, when I used to run inside my house or my apartment complex), but then a 2-month flare up of my ulcerative colitis put a stop to this. So had to restart my running. After about month being locked up due to my corona illness, when i first started to run, I could not do my usual distance or pace. I attributed this to a combination of my lack of activities for over 3 months and post COVID issues. Therefore, I started walking again. At the same time, I started some of the yoga stretches I used to do a few years ago to improve my flexibility as well as strengthen my lower back. This became a routine for about 4-5 weeks. Then out of the blue, Netflix said you can watch stuff for free for a weekend. I downloaded so much stuff that I am still watching for 3 weeks, that my walking / yoga sessions have almost literally stopped. The last 2 weeks made me realize that getting into discipline is very hard. You cannot have distractions. So, starting the whole routine again this week. The plan now is to start regular morning and evening walks, morning yoga and may be weekend cycling. Let’s see how this goes. I will update this routine again at the end of January.

The third leg of my 3-legged stool called good physical health is good sleep. A lot of us, including myself in my earlier days give the least importance to sleep - both the duration and the quality. While I used to get  my quota of sleep, I always felt that I could do better on the quality of sleep. My doctor kept telling me for last 5 years to sleep early and wake up early. We all learnt in this in primary school - “Early bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. Somehow, our later education made us “wise enough” to both forget this proverb and discard it as unnecessary. Add to this our technology advancement. A couple of decades ago, not many in India new about baseball, basketball or American football. In the last twenty years, with friends and relatives in the US, and technology bringing these sports to our living rooms (and to our handheld devices, in the recent past months), our sleep patterns has been disturbed by “live sports”. I used to watch sports, movies etc sometimes beyond midnight. To correct this, I told myself that I will get to bed early. But because I was used to sleeping late, just by getting to bed early did not make me sleep early. I turned the way around - I started getting up by 5 am. After a few days, my body became tired and I had to sleep by 9:30 pm. This became a routine, and for last 4 weeks or so, i am sticking to a 9:30 pm bed time and 5 am wake up alarm. While I have not felt any benefits of this now, this helped me in my next step to happiness - good mental health. More on that tomorrow.

 

2021 and Beyond ...

As I said yesterday, the last 6 weeks has made me think of what next, including coming up with a plan for 2021 and more importantly, for the rest of my life..

I always like to put pen to paper when i think. As I started writing, the first thing i wrote was what i wanted in life / out of life - the answer was a single, simple word, “happiness”. This seemed to simplistic and kind of unrealistic. The next question that came up was “what is happiness”. This answer somehow was too difficult and I am yet to get it. I therefore focused my thoughts on “what i need to do to achieve happiness”. This question, seemed a lot more easier one to answer, but i found that there was no single or simple answer. A few more days, hacking my brain, a bit of reading some of our scriptures, a book about an elite athlete and a coupe of courses gave me some pointers.

This is what I found. To be happy, I need to

1. Be in good health - physically and mentally
2. Look back in the past, think of good times and try to repeat or do similar activities
3. Be useful, or helpful to everyone who asked for my help.

After some more time of thinking, I felt everything that I could think of, could be put into one of these three things.

Before I elaborate on the above, I will take a step back and explain my philosophy of life. For more than 15 years, I have always felt that everything in our life can be put into 2 buckets: Needs and Wants. The more we confine ourselves to our needs and minimize our wants, we can lead a happy and a fulfilling life. Now, with this is the background, I started to detail out a plan for 2021 and rest of my life.

1. Be in good health:

For over 15 years, i have suffered severe back pain on and off due to disc degeneration. I have visited multiple doctors, gone through a whole lot of treatment and therapy, starting from physiotherapy sessions to Ayurvedic treatments to yoga. At a point 12 years ago, a doctor said I have to wear an orthopedic belt to support my back for the rest of my life and have to be extremely careful even when doing small things like getting up and down a footpath on the road. It took me several years to get over that (after I changed the doctor and the mode of treatment), when one fine day in 2015 I ran my first 10 km race.

Over the last 5 years, my ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disorder (which is supposed to be part of my life) has put in a lot of restrictions on what i can do and cannot. These have taught me the importance of good physical health. I realized that if I need to have happiness, I should be healthy. While somethings cannot be changed, others are under our control. This line of thinking made me realize this most important truth of my life: “try to control the controllables, and leave to God the uncontrollables”. This was also the first step to my next part of the plan - good mental health. A strong mind leads to a strong body. We have all read this, or been told or taught this. But more often than not, we neglect this. I now decided to put a plan for building my mental health as well.

2. Repeat past good things

As I progressed further, I thought of what made me happy in the past. I identified several things that made me happy including temple visits, travel, books, unplanned trips etc. So, the key was to repeat these things in the future to get happiness. As they say, invest in experiences instead of things, because experiences makes us happy over a longer period than things. 

Having identified the areas, I started my plan. More importantly, I decided i would do things that would change my life one step at a time. Wait until tomorrow to read my plan and the runway, and if the early successes and failures.

2020 - The Googly Year

I recently read a tweet - “Hindsight is 2020 was a probably said by a time traveler from the future”. 😁 How true. No one saw such a year coming, including all the astrologers who came on TV on 1st Jan 2020 and predicted a wonderful 2020.

The year had turned the lives of a lot of people beyond recognition - people lost their lives, lost their loved ones, lost jobs, had to walk hundreds of kilometers without food and water back to their homes and many more. These were, as usual, the people who were less fortunate.

On the personal front, I was better off, with just some minor inconveniences. I belong to the more fortunate group of people, having never bothered about a roof over my head, or walls to protect me from natures vagaries, always comfortable to know that my next hot meal will be served when due and nicely clothed. So, while this year, did not affect me much, I had my own ups and downs. Some very positive happenings, time periods to pretty bad periods. 

The first two months, like for most of us, were very good. I was into my fitness routine, clocking 20 km of running every week, reading a fair bit, and in general trying to enjoy lie. A trip to Puri in February was a highlight for this year. I had booked a trip about year ago, and had to cancel it then. May be, Lord Jaganath did not want me to come and see Him then. While this time, I was blessed to spend 5 days in Puri, with close to 10 hours every day inside the temple complex, either at the Darshan, listening to the Bhajans or watching the flag changing ceremony. A few more days at Bhubaneswar and Konark rounded a beautiful trip. This trip made me understand myself a bit more. One, I could travel without knowing the local language or Hindi. Two, I could survive on rice and curd and idly for 10 days and still enjoy my travel. It also threw a couple of surprises - the local bus travel without understanding anything but just buying a ticket to the destination, trying hard to get curd rice which did not contain onion, chillies or mustard seasoning.

Come March, while people were yet to start washing their hands and maintaining social distance, I had a trailer about 10 days before lock down. I contracted the famed “madras eye” or conjunctivitis of the eye, and for a week was washing my hands at least 20 times, and staying away from family. When the lock down was announced and the washing and distancing was mandated, i felt it was more an extension of my previous 10 days. While the early days of lockdown didn’t affect me much, unfortunately, my ulcerative colitis found a good time for flare up. Between mid-may and end-June, things were pretty horrible - my health was not so good, unfortunately none of my doctors were available, therefore no medicinal assistance to treat me. I was just running blind. This was the time, my belief in “karma” strengthened and I just took things one day at a time. Post July, with weekly consultations health improved and by end July I was almost my usual self, the only downside was losing a few kilos of weight.

The year had a couple of more health scares, including testing positive for corona, and forced into isolation for 17 days, plus more medication. As they say, “this too shall pass”, was true. The isolation was a blessing in disguise. I saw many movies that were in pipeline. It also gave me time to think on what next. As the year progressed, a voluntary decision to get off network - no facebook, 2 hours of internet time, no phone calls and many more restrictions helped me a lot. I thought a lot on the past, present and future. Introspection and Reflection makes a person to improve self. I used this period to plan for future as well as to write a a fair number of personal “thank you” notes to people who made an impact on my life. 

Finally, as the new year begins, what did I learn from 2020:

1. Believe in “this too shall pass”, whenever you face difficult situations
2. Be grateful for all the good things that you have in life
3. Once in a while, try to get out of “comfort zone”, as someone sad ‘ Life begins at the end of your comfort zone’
4. Help others, especially people who are less fortunate than you.

The last 6 week also helped me to prepare a plan for myself. More on that later.

Wishing all readers a happy, prosperous, safe and healthy new year.