Crohn's Chronicles: A blog about Crohn's Disease

I think about this pretty constantly. Is "mind over matter" really a thing? Is it really possible to outsmart your body? If so, is this a useful tool? Or is it a harmful lie? Is it just kind of a white lie? Also, (and this is what the whole thing really boils down to for me) is the mind actually separate from the body? Are we our bodies or are we our minds? Do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Or are the mind and the body actually one and the same? My opinion on this subject has changed drastically and regularly over the years. Early on, right after my diagnosis, I was firmly ensconced in the pro-mind-over-matter camp. Without ever thinking about an alternative, ironically. Actually, this started long before I was diagnosed. For at least a year leading up to my official diagnosis, I experienced intense health issues and paid very little real attention to them. I just kept on going as best I could, thinking these symptoms would go away eventually. This, obviously, did n...

It's Health Activist Choice Day again. So, what do I want to say? Well, there's this post I've been trying to write for a while now, but can't really seem to get a grasp on what it actually is. So, what I'm going to do is just force myself to write about it, and hopefully I turn out something worth posting. Let's see what happens. If you follow me on twitter and/or facebook, you probably read at least one of my (many, many) posts about my getting to meet Gloria Steinem. It was a pretty amazing day. I got to attend both an informal Q&A and then a more formal lecture later in the day. I was lucky enough to ask her a question in each setting. In response to my first question she told me to believe in myself. I mean, it's not a big deal or anything. ...Okay, she was telling all of the young feminists in the room, but she was looking right at me when she said it. And let me tell you, when your idol looks you right in the face and tells you to believe i...

I've started to write this particular post several times in the last couple months, and today is health activist's choice for HAWMC, which means I get to write about whatever I want. So, I figure now's the time to get it out there. I've written several times about how I named my colon, but I never really specified why, and I think that's pretty important. The truth is that I didn't even know why I was doing it at first. I was going through a really rough flare and reading Are You My Guru: How Medicine, Medication & Madonna Saved My Life   by Wendy Shanker  (which you should totally pick up). I had read a review of the book on Feministing.com and it sounded really interesting, so I bought it on Amazon. At one point, Wendy visits some sort of non-western medicine practitioner (I can't remember the proper terminology, it was a while ago...) and is asked whether she's named her liver, the organ that was causing the most trouble for her at the time...