Something that has plagued my family, my mother especially.

My dad started having problems with it probably 10 years before he passed away, and he had learned how to control it. He started dieting correctly and barely had any flair ups until his time of passing.

My mother, on the other hand, she had it the worst. Her first bout of it hospitalized her and she needed heavy antibiotics to get her squared away. After that it turned to every 6 months, and then almost every 3 months that she would get an attack. She had changed her diet, wasn’t eating seeds, was having mostly salads and chicken and cut back on her alcohol intake significantly.

Unfortunately she kept getting it until she wound up having the gastrorectomy, where the surgeon cut out a portion of her colon that was causing these issues and re-attached it. That was 5 months ago (I’m writing this in July 2024), and she has gone back to eating almost everything that she wasn’t able to before.

As of June 30th, I went to the ER with pain on my bladder and, after initially going to the urgent care thinking it was a UTI, I ended up there. Thankfully it wasn’t a long wait before I was admitted to one of the first rooms and started telling them how I felt. They gave me a bag of IV fluids, and unfortunately the tech couldn’t get a good vein and took a few tries. After a little while, I was brought to the Cat Scan room, and did the circuit with that before being brought back to my room. And wouldn’t you know it, the doctor comes in and says I’ve got Diverticulitis myself.

Great.

I was on a liquid diet for a few days, which frankly absolutely sucked. With working for UPS, I need to have food to help me out. After a primary visit on the following Wednesday and a gastro zoom call later, all I’m missing now is the cardiologist specialist and I’m covered for the next part of my life. Since then I’ve been pretty good with following modified diet and things seem to be going okay.

The fun part about all of this, is the colonoscopy that I get to have – on Dad’s birthday of all days. Thirty five years old, and I’m getting a colonoscopy.

Great.