Happy Sixth Crohn's-iversary!

I missed writing for the Fifth anniversary and I am about four months late on writing this post. As all of you can see, I rarely post anymore (shame!) and barely even login to check on this site. Other than paying the yearly hosting fees and hoping that someone uses my Vitamix link to buy one (it really just does go towards paying for the maintenance of this site) I tend to forget about the fact that at one time this was my life.

Writing, creating, connecting with people like you. It's important. But time has distanced me from the urgency of those being newly diagnosed with Crohn's or the like, and I've become quite complacent with where my health lies now.

That's not to say I don't think about my illness daily- I do. I know I can't eat donuts or croissants, but I've really started bending the rules otherwise. Rice is now part of my regular diet, along with plantains (I now live in South Florida which is basically Cuba, and I love it) and I'm not as much of an ingredients Nazi as I once had to be. The big obvious ones like high fructose corn syrup I stray away from, but if someone orders me a mixed drink at the bar and one-sixth of the mix is beer, I don't freak out. That's what my medication is for.

This is my second year on the biologic Entyvio and it's working pretty well. I recently had all the fun aspects of a checkup from my gastroenterologist and was elated when the results came back as "normal." Imagine- my insides that once caused me so many issues, calling for surgical removal of parts of my intestines, now look like a "normal" person's. Amazing. I was so scared of all of the side effects of biologics previously.  I'm the kind of person that goes to the medication's website and literally reads over the clinical trial studies and results. All that tiny, tiny print that looks like scribbles of mindless legal matters- yeah, I read it all. I want to know how people before me felt on the medicine, and frankly, it's often frightening. However, when I made the decision to go on Entyvio I knew it was very much a matter of life or a slow, painful death. Having a resectioning surgery for Crohn's was the most painful and difficult thing I've ever had to go through. Eight weeks of recovery, had I not had support at the time I am really not sure what I would have/ could have done.

Nevertheless, the meds are working, and I'm not-so-paleo anymore, sad to say. Although, I admit that with a grain of salt. I changed my eating habits so dramatically over the last six years that my brain defaults to what is acceptable and non-acceptable for me to eat without me even realizing it. Ordering a hamburger? Of course I don't want a bun or American "cheese." In fact, I often forget when I go out that not everyone eats that way, so I forget to tell them to omit the bread, or croutons, or whatever. Then I laugh when my meal comes and it's very SAD looking (get it?) and I have to remove all the chunks of glutenous things.

Thankfully, though, in the US and I am also noticing abroad, gluten-free has become quite a large movement. I'm shocked more and more at the availability and variety of products that there are for people like us with food sensitivities. Even Paleo is so mainstream now you can get a meal-prep service just about anywhere that caters to the preferences. It's really awesome and I'm proud of some of even the larger food corporations for adapting to the demand. Of course, you know it all starts with where we spend our dollars, so really- we have each other to thank for demanding these changes.

Overall, the sixth year of Crohn's can best be described as complacency. More and more of my friends are sadly being diagnosed with some kind of illness -thank you American diet- but I'm always trying to make myself a readily available source of advice. Some of them take it, most of them don't. But you can't help someone who doesn't want to help themselves.

I'll continue to pay for this blog to stay alive. Miraculously people are still searching, finding, and cooking my recipes (it makes me so happy to know that, it really does!) and leaving comments to let me know. I love checking Salted Paleo and finding that you all are still cooking these recipes I put my little heart into and finding them useful. Please continue to leave questions and comments- I promise I will eventually check them (and get back to you). Emails work too. jadah(at)saltedpaleo(dot)com
I'm happy and as healthy as I can ask for.

How are you all?