Oh my. What a few months this has been. I've been diagnosed with IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I had a stomach flu, and first it just didn't get better, then slowly got much, much worse. I ended up in Emergency a couple of times, on doctor's orders that if it got worse, I was to go back. The final time, they admitted me. All I knew was that something was writing lines of fire across my insides, and I really wanted it to stop. They tested my blood, cleaned out my insides to scope me, then filled me with barium for x-rays. I'm not going to go in any greater detail, except to say that this has been one of the most invasive responses to illness that I've ever had. It's left me feeling a little vulnerable, as has the pain. I ate almost normally yesterday for the first time in over a month, and so ended up in terrible pain in the middle of the night. I have medication, but now I need to learn to cope with the condition. IBS is essentially a diagnosis of  'yes it hurts, but we don't know why'. They ruled out all sorts of illnesses, and what it comes down to is managing my stress, eating well, and generally taking care of myself.

I wanted desperately to ask the universe 'why me'. I really, really did. But the lesson is too implicit for me to ignore. I'm supposed to learn how to take care of myself better. Or perhaps to remember skills I've forgotten to use. I know what helps me manage my stress, and I know I've not been managing it well. I've not been writing, and perhaps that emotional block was bound to show up in the physical. How could it possibly have been described better than by the gut of me, the core of me; a system that has the most nerve-endings of anywhere in my body?

So here I am, at the keyboard, reaching in to my worded soul, reaching out to a blank page. It feels like I am poised on the brink of something life-altering. Something beyond physical wellness, perhaps. How peculiar.