Swallow it.

Sometimes at night I lure myself into dreamland by relating my day in my head, diary style.  I’ll spare this account the bastardization of an example.  Everyone knows it all sounds better in your head, and I can’t be the only one who does it.  Relating one’s story as if it were paragraphs in a book somehow makes it more digestible.  Perhaps it provides a bit of much longed-for perspective.  I’m the only one who will ever hear this story in my head, so one would expect a liberal degree of alteration in order to maintain a bit of dignity and/or sanity.  But tonight… well… tonight I just couldn’t swallow it.

I’ve been sick, you see.  And as any chronically gimpy person will tell you, one gets awfully sick of being sick.  As a result of 5 years of pharmaceutical guineapig madness, general medical incompetance, and a lack of personal willpower – I’m at a bit of a dead end.

You see, the little town that is the Land of Crohn’s Disease is held together by a bunch of little neighborhoods.  These little neighborhoods are closely woven together, as they must be supportive of one another to withstand the danger of being the only little town, on the only little island, in a big huge fucking sea of bullshit.

Among the little neighborhoods that hold the land together,  I have lived in every one.   Prednisone Hell, Level 7 – a temporary fix-up drug that causes insanity in my case.  I’ve also lived in the ritzy Pill-Popping neighborhood.  At one time my daily regimine of oral medication consisted of 19 pills, none of which tasted pleasant nor made me feel any better.

I lived for many moons at the corner of You-Can’t-Eat-Jack-Didly and Bitter Street, where I managed to convince myself that life without bread was worth living, and that Jello really was under-appreciated as a dietary staple.  I think I also almost burned down the world while in residence there.

And, for a long while, I lived relatively comfortably in the Biological District.  In the Biological District, everything was highly enginered in space-tubes by aliens, and had to be administered in magic goo; some of which hurt as badly as a bee sting on the way in.  And all cost more than a solid gold turd the size of Texas.

But then things started getting bad for me in the Biological District too.  My body slowly figured out the magic spell of the goo injections, and shook free.

While I am more than content to -fore-go the horrific potential long-term effects of the biologicals, as well as their down-right IMMORAL prices… I’m quite scared to be kicked to the curb.  It’s one thing to walk away from a drug of your own free will.  It’s quite another all together to have the drug walk away from you.

But, essentially, that is what has happened.  No medication on the market, for Crohn’s or any other ailment, helps me anymore.  Even good old Imodium is a 50/50 shot.  My body has simply thrown down the guantlet.

“LISTEN YOU,” it says to me in rumbling waves.  “I shall pooh when and where I please.  And OFTEN.  I shall crab and be a general pain at all hours.  I will toss out  medication faster than your belly can break it down.  You DARE challenge me?”

For some reason I picture Zues, from The Clash of the Titans, as the pissed off voice of my body.  Anyway, back to Crohn’s Land.  Right.

So, the convoluted point of that little story is that there’s no more damn neighborhoods to try.  The only “official” medicine left causes white brain matter.  Whatever that is.  I’d rather not find out.

SO.  I’m stepping outside the streets of Crohn’s Land and into the pooh-infested outskirts of science.  I’m going where the doctors will only observe me from a distance with binoculars and a large sanitized stick.  I’m going to the land of WORMS.

Helminthic Therapy, to be precise.  I’m going to willingly infect my person with parasitic worms.  These worms, in a manner beyond current human comprehension, can trick the body into behaving.  In order to disguise their presence, the worms have somehow learned to broadcast an “All Clear” message that is heard on all bodily frequencies.  This science is minimal, but promising.

A.  White Brain Matter.

B.  Feel Like Shit Forever.

C.  Eat Worms.

Five years of insanity, pain, learning, fighting, researching, and frustration… and this is where I end up.  I’m going to dish out $4k for a hookworm larvae-infested bandaid, and a glass of whipworm eggs.

Seriously?  Bring it on.

But physically?  How utterly revolting.  On a fundamental level, this treatment makes more sense than all the “medicines” combined.  But then I think about the hookworms that will crawl from lungs into my stomach.  And I shudder.  And I crawl out of bed.  And I google for something inspirational.  Some worm symbology that will somehow quell the shudders of disgust.  And I remind myself that, well… I remind myself that I truly have nothing to lose.  Except the $4k of course.

Again, I say, “Bring it on.”

I’ll quit gagging eventually.