Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer

Well my knee is almost back to status quo although my Crohn’s is doing kinda meh. I’m definitely not 100% and had a nasty sinus infection on Friday and had to call in sick. My Aunt Gretter is worrried about me and is sending me a bunch of stuff in email about Crohn’s (like I haven’t already done research myself), but it’s nice to know she cares and is thinking about me. I’m contemplating doing some healing rituals, it’s funny how regardless of religion people get more “spiritual” when they are in time of stress or illness. Kinda makes me feel like I should pay more attention to my beliefs.

On a more awesome and less health related note, the guild’s 1 year anniversary was on Friday and totally awesome. I took some decent sinus drugs, slept till 3:00 and the festivities began at 5:30. We had a really nice meeting in the Ring of Valor in Orgrimar (which was symbolic because we formed the guild in Org). Ray opened up with meeting with some trivia of the past. I gave a nice speach and recognized all the officers and members who have stuck with us through the thick and the thin. I took a lot of video including everyone taking turns waving at the camera. I’m going to make a nice video montage of all that. Finally we ended the evening by engaging in some world PVP and destroying ZG.

So confirmed I have Ileocolic Crohn’s Disease (ICD) which affects both the ileum (the last part of the small intestine that connects to the large intestine) and the large intestine, accounts for fifty percent of cases of Crohn’s Disease. The disease can attack any part of the digestive tract, from mouth to anus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crohn’s_disease

Crohn’s disease is a chronic condition that cannot be cured. It is characterized by periods of improvement followed by episodes when symptoms flare up. With treatment, most people achieve a healthy height and weight, and the mortality rate for the disease is low. Crohn’s disease is associated with an increased risk of small bowel and colorectal carcinoma.

In summary, my doctor is putting me on budesonide which is a special, expensive steroid which I have to take 3 pills once a day. This steroid is very cool because it only activates in the intestines which means I don’t get all the nasty side affects of steroids.

I’ll get through it.

Yeah I’m a winner! Doh, not really. I think I am one of the 10,000 estimated people in North America with the rare bowel disease known as Ulcerative Colitis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulcerative_colitis.

Confirmation back from the doctor tomorrow but this article mentions arthritic knees and aphthous ulcers if the mouth which I’ve gotten before (on the sides, top, and inner lips). The pictures look almost exactly like what my colon looked like when my doctor showed me. Sounds like I have “Left-sided colitis” because it’s the upper portion of the color and the very bottom portion of the small intestine. It probably started when I was 25 or younger when I thought I had gallstones I probably had pain the colon and it flaring up. They also say that with Ulcerative Colitis you have continuous area of inflammation (which is what the doctor saw) where as Crohn’s is patchy. Also interestingly enough my Aunt Liz has Ulcerative Colitis. So the guess in the medical community that it’s genetic isn’t a bad guess when 2 in 10,0000 estimated people in North America (of 515,600,000 people) are related.

Wednesday we destroyed Attumen and got Moroes on the third attempt. Today we took down Maiden on the third attempt, then finally went to see the show. After trying multiple times miserably wiping halfway through phase 3, we brought in Baliku for poison removal and got the win in two attempts. We really have the first 4 bosses down now after lots of experimentation with technique. The coming weeks will show whether what happened this week is repeatable but I think it will be. The “raiders” list is working well and with only taking properly geared folks we’re dominating Karazhan.