Thirteen Days

~

Today my guts woke me up.

I'll spare you the details.

But I wonder how many of you have ever been woken out of a dead sleep by your guts, not your bladder.

It sucks.

I have my next Cimzia treatment tomorrow.

Exactly fourteen days from the last one.

My guts lasted thirteen days.

This is progress.

And it means the drug is WORKING.

The drug is an immunosuppressor. It is a TNF blocker. What does that mean? It means my immune system makes too much of a protein called TNF. This drug tells my body to stop making that protein. (I'm not a doctor, but I think that's what all this means!)

Since this drug is working, I now know that my illness is in fact genetic.

A discovery that relieves me and haunts me.

Because it means there are others in my family who could potentially have or develop this disease.

Not just my babies, who I chose to have, knowing there was a possibility that they could carry the gene for Crohn's.

But for my brothers.

And their babies, who they had before we ever knew I had Crohn's.

For all of my other family.

For all of them, we wait.

And we pray.

But the drug is working.

There is hope.

Hope.

~