IBD and Weight Gain

Having IBD we have quite a large assortment of medications to take, all of which have such lovely side effects (if only I could enjoy a side effect). They either cause the very problem we are trying to make go away for example taking immunosuppresant medication leaves you vulnerable to getting colds and other viral infections etc; or something to stop being nauseous and the side effects is nausea (eye roll). However one side effect I want to talk about seems harmless and might even appear as a benefit. That side effect is weight gain. Due to the constant trips to the toilet we tend to loose weight (I have a hard time gaining...still under weight *sniff sniff*) so it may seem gaining weight would be a great side effect right! No it isn't! Nobody wants to look like a swelled up balloon and this can have serious consequences in terms of affecting an individuals mental health. Already dealing with self esteem issues be it to being surrounded by idiots who constantly remind you how sick you look, or if you are just self conscious about your body image especially if you have surgical scars and haven't accepted your victory battle scars as I call them. You would think having a chronic illness which sends you to the toilet so often that loosing weight gained would be easy, but reality is its quite the opposite. Prednisone is famous for giving its users what has been coined moon face where our faces swell up nicely and quite round :( It's no fun trying to fit into that sexy dress you bought to go to that work function or party you have been looking forward to, then you can barely fit into it!

Society in my opinion is directly responsible for many of our insecurities by setting invisible guidelines as to what we are supposed to look,how our hair should be or what weight we should be at. This has annoyed the shit out of me (pun intended). I am 5ft 11.5 inches (damn it missed it by .5 grrr) and I currently weigh 146 pounds. Just a tad on the light side, but I wish I weighed at least 170 to have that Thor body and get the ladies (muhahaha). Only recently started accepting I am a slim built guy and having a chiseled body isn't what should be my most attractive but my personality and character, my values and what I stand for. I try to motivate my female friends who feel they are fat because society says that they are and I look at them thinking what on earth are you going on about,you look beautiful and they think I am just being polite. I don't buy into the women should look like a runway model, I actually like my women a little curvy (oops hope that wasn't tmi)

The joys of having an invisible illness is nobody sees the internal physical struggle as well as the emotional struggling that we deal with on a daily basis. Simple comments like you have gained weight might appear harmless, but to the person who has been desperately struggling to loose that weight they gained from steroids can be devastating to them. This reminds me of an incident which happened while we were out at the festival of the dead on Saturday. Seven of us with IBD attended and 2 of my lovely bellies fell ill. I went to ask for a sick bag for one of them and the paramedics assumed it was for my drunk friend and said they were all out, once I explained that she had IBD he immediately gave it to me and appologized explaining they were keeping them for genuine medical cases. Another belly wasn't so fortunate as her Crohn's kicked in towards the end and had her feeling sharp abdominal cramps and feeling nauseous so she sat down at the bottom of some stairs until it passed. A member of the security staff asked her in a rude manner to getup and go be sick outside, we explained to her she's not drunk but has Crohn's and that she just needed to let it do its thing and she will be fine. She later returned several minutes later using a condescending tone treating her like she was drunk. This just goes to show me how little understanding we as a society have or are either unaware of invisible diseases or have lost our empathy for our fellow human beings who are not well. Just because you can't see someones illness doesn't mean that they are not suffering tremendously; they simply have learned to adapt and carry on their daily lives because they simply have no other choice but to keep on going.

That being said, I am now up to 6 toilets since I've been in country hehe (I should have used this as a fund raisier for the amount of toilets I visit or something...just a thought)