The last time I felt this good at Christmas time was in 2020, four years ago. Considering that I was not feeling good just a couple of months ago, this is surprising, good news.
Christmas 2021:
My first symptoms showed up in January, 2021. Over the next ten months, my symptoms became progressively worse. The weekend after Thanksgiving was the last time I ate a full meal for over two months. December of 2021 through January and the beginning of February 2022, I was in bad shape. I had put out my Thanksgiving decorations at the beginning of November. I was able to put the Christmas tree up the weekend before Thanksgiving, but I only put ten ornaments on the tree because I was too tired to continue. Then I became very sick. The tree was up until mid-January and the Thanksgiving decorations were up until mid-February, which was when the prednisone kicked in and I finally felt good enough to put the Thanksgiving decorations away.
Christmas of 2021 was not good.
Christmas 2022:
February 2022 was when I went on prednisone for the first time, and thankfully, it did its job. However, every time I went off of it, my symptoms worsened. So 2022 was the year of trying one maintenance medication after another. In October, my G.I. put me on two budesonide pills a day because he wanted to minimize my time on prednisone. They didn't work. In November I had a colonoscopy that still showed inflammation. He upped the budesonide pills to three pills a day. But by my follow-up appointment in mid-December, I was doing bad again. Not as bad as before my diagnosis, but still bad. My doctor said to finish out my budesonide prescription before going on prednisone, but after several days of continuing downhill symptoms, I said, the heck with this, stopped the budesonide, and started taking prednisone again.
By Christmas Day itself, I was doing better, but most of the holiday season was bad.
Christmas 2023:
In February, I started taking Rinvoq, which did not improve my symptoms right away, but it did keep me from going backwards, which no maintenance medication I'd taken before had been able to do. In July, we had to change our health insurance, which meant going through the whole authorization process again. I ran out of Rinvoq in August. By September my symptoms were worse. I had some leftover budesonide, so I started taking that, and it did help some. Authorization for Rinvoq finally came through at the end of September (three months after the authorization process started!), but I wasn't doing great.
I started Rinvoq again at the beginning of October. But while it kept me from gong further down the symptom hole, it didn't help with the symptoms I was having. I was not feeling good in October or November. However, by mid-December, I started seeing improvement in very small increments. By mid-January, I was doing much better.
So like the previous Christmas, I was doing better by Christmas Day itself, but most of the holiday season was bad.
Christmas 2024:
This year! Autumn was not good. I had a miscommunication with my doctor in which I tapered my mesalamine too far down, resulting in me going into a flare. I ended up going on prednisone the third week of October (just one pill) after a bad encounter with a restaurant meal. Surprise, surprise (not really) the prednisone, even just the one pill, stopped not only the restaurant debacle, but also my flare! I finished the prednisone about five weeks ago, and I'm doing pretty good.
It wasn't long ago that I was thinking, "Oh, no, I'm going to have another miserable holiday season." Thus, the title of this post. This is the first holiday season that I have felt good for November and December since 2020.
I'd like to end with a few Christmas quotes:
May you never be too grown up to search the skies on
Christmas Eve.
- Unknown
Christmas
waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more
beautiful.
~Norman Vincent Peale
I truly believe that if we keep
telling the Christmas story, singing the Christmas songs, and living the
Christmas spirit, we can bring joy and happiness and peace to this world."
~ Norman Vincent Peale
December 2023 post: Warm Fuzzies For Christmas!
December 2022 post: Christmas Too Commercial? That's Not Such a Bad Thing
© Colitis Senioritis 2024
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