Crohn's Disease: Humor Helps

Humor Helps
The Sh*t List
Cook Food You Can Digest
Mug "To Go"
FREE Phone App!
Poll: How Long Have You Had Crohn's?
Contact Your Reps
Awareness Ribbon Generator
Vote for the Best Slogans
Ingest Some IBS Info
Crohn's and Colitis Online
Crohn's Wiki Article
Spill Your Guts... er, Thoughts

Be sure to check out the talk bubble feature below. In that space I will feature rotating quotations and quick info that I come across from forums, discussions, and articles online.

My daughter's friend was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease about two years ago and she has faced many challenges, as she struggles to understand her disease and to restructure her life to accommodate it. Dietary restrictions, controlling stress, and sudden attacks are just some of the issues she deals with daily. Serious, chronic autoimmune diseases like Crohn's Disease significantly affect the lives of sufferers -- causing pain, major bowel issues, and, often, dramatically altered lifestyles.

Fortunately, the disease does not appear to rob people of a sense of humor, something that was clearly evident at the the Take Steps fundraising walk sponsored by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America.

As my daughter and her friend walked and talked with others with inflammatory bowel diseases (and their families), the mood was determined, hopeful, and filled with wry humor. Most teams or groups wore cause-related t-shirts and many of these reflected the wry humor that seems to be an essential way of coping with this often grim health issue. Among the team slogans being carried on signs or worn on t-shirts, my daughter noted the following:

Sh*t Happens
Super Poopers
No Colon and Still Rollin'
Who's Got the Runs?
We Can't Be Colonized
No Guts Sucks
Pooping is Cool

As is the way of these things, the slogans sparked some additional thoughts and ideas. Her friend's father had suggested (and been outvoted on) naming their team The Bowel Movement. My daughter responded with No Guts, No Glory. Some others that were suggested:

You Need a Strong Stomach to Have Crohn's
Got Guts?
We Don't Need No Stinkin' Roughage

This shirt started us drafting a list of some common phrases that might mean something different when said by someone with Crohn's, IBD, colitis, etc.:

Feel free to add your own suggestions in the coments section. This is an annual event, after all. Similar walks take place around the country.

Gotta Go
Hold That Thought
I'm Pooped
Walk, Don't Run

The humor is what got me focused on the topic of Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome, which is the umbrella name for a constellation of related diseases centered in the digestive tract. Many of these -- and Crohn's is one -- are really autoimmune diseases.

The humor is what got me to start doing some research and prompted me to send a donation to the CCFA (Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America). I apologize if the "bathroom humor" offends anyone, but it is a fundamental aspect of these diseases and one that aptly lends itself to some gentle (or defiant) humor.

Perhaps you know someone who suffers from one these digestive, autoimmune diseases.As I mentioned, I certainly do. Perhaps you know someone who suffers from intestinal issues and doesn't know why. These diseases seem to be spreading and seem to be affecting people at earlier ages. If this is so, then sooner or later, the topic will become more public. I think it should be sooner.

This is a list of descriptive names and explanations for various types of bowel movements. The introduction states, in part, that the page contains a ". . .load of scatalogical humor. If you don't think feces can be funny stop reading here." Among the excremental items described is The Sh*t List.

• Lincoln Log (or perhaps the Lincolon Log)
• Liquid
• Second Wave
• Ghost
• Guiness Book of Records
• Corn
• The Crowd Pleaser
• The Mood Enhancer
• The Ritual
• The Aftershock
• The "Honeymoon's Over"

I have chosen to list the more benign names here. Please visit the site for the complete list with explanations.

For a more official discussion of fecal categories (and yes, there is a picture for each of the 7 categories), see the Bristol Stool Scale.

This tool gets my vote on all levels. It's an iPhone/iPod tool designed to help patients keep tract of disease-related information. This includes medications, frequency of attacks. level of pain, headaches, and much, much more. Created by Brett Shamosh, who has had Crohn's Disease and colitis since he was a teen, the GI Monitor is an app that works with iPhone, iTouch, and Blackberry. If you don't have one of those, you can use the tool online. And no matter which method you choose, it's FREE, FREE, FREE! from WellApps.

With this handy tool patients can keep thorough records of their nutrition, bowel conditions, attacks and symptoms, medications, and much more. The information can then be printed off and/or emailed to one's physician so that a care partnership is built. Very, very smart.

The thoroughness of the design attests to the fact that its creator is intimately familiar with these diseases. In fact, he also writes a blog that chronicles his experiences as an IBD patient. The You Tube video below is both comprehensive and easy to understand and provides excellent training for using the app.

Make your own Crohn's Awareness ribbon -- and have it say exactly what you want it to. This great Support Ribbon Generator lets you do just that.

You're welcome to grab thi Crohnies ribbon. Just right-click the image and save it to your computer.

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the flat,
There was general confusion, including the cat.
The bathroom was strewn with the ostomy ware,
That I had abandoned with utter despair...

The rest of this poem by Marjorie Kaufmann can be read on the Inside-Out site.