As with all things, recovery is never a simple process and the road is never a straight one. In the course of learning more about Ulcerative Colitis I have had a couple of what I call mini-flare ups. Generally this revolves around feeling a bit rubbish and tired, having stomach pain, having a few toilet attacks and it all just feeling a little bit wrong. When this first happened, I was extremely scared. We had William for the weekend and I cried a lot about it. I had woken up in a lot of pain and I was upset that I wasn’t going to be able to spend time with William and Jordan as a family. I was getting really wound up about how much the diagnosis was taking from me. I was very upset. There are however some things that I have worked out make it a little better.
The first is food. It seems to often be food that has set it off and so it makes sense that food is the thing that solves it. When I say food sets it off, I don’t actually mean eating badly. More recently I had a mini flare-up having eaten cabbage for 4 days in a row (I had a lunch with coleslaw in it). So one thing I make sure I do is take my diet back to basics, this doesn’t necessarily mean bland food (like chicken nuggets and chips) but food that I know is safe for me (spaghetti and meatballs in a tomato sauce).
After this, and a major major player is rest. I try and go back to bed/sleep on the sofa for as much as I can until I feel better. I have found that rest is the main thing that makes me feel better. This could be because I “overwork” my body. I have never been particularly great at taking time out or time for myself and this still continues to be a slight problem. Lessons learn to try and take more time.
The final thing that I have found helps while letting the body sort itself out is a hot water bottle or a heat pack. I will sit/lie with them on my stomach and it helps the pain a little bit. While it isn’t a saving grace and doesn’t make everything go away, it does help just a little bit to relieve the discomfort.
Nothing ground breaking but a basically a little bit of self care if how I get myself through the mini-flare ups. I am hoping that they get less frequent as I work out the things that set me off and learn that thing called “relaxation”.