No Fair! (Stamp Foot)

OK. So this is a minor bi%&# session that I need to get out of my system.

I have Multiple Sclerosis, a chronic, incurable (so far), and potentially progressive neurological disease. It sucks, right? And I've gone out of my way to be positive and even share my good humor about it all with the world, right? Yeah me. I'm a fricken hero.

So, don't you think that means that I should be cut some slack with other physical issues? Shouldn't I be exempt from other illnesses?

But no, that is not the case. As I may or may have not mentioned here previously, I have Ulcerative Colitis (an inflammatory bowel disease that has some pretty terrible and embarrassing symptoms I will not be describing here or anywhere). My UC hasn't really been much of an issue since being diagnosed with MS. For the most part, it's been in remission. I even wondered, if it might have been related to the MS since it's an inflammatory illness and perhaps helped by the MS treatment.

Well, not lately. It is raging. So much so that even me, the bad patient, called my primary and received a referral to a gastroenterologist who I'm supposed to see this coming week, I think. This is, yet another, doctor's appointment for which I have no sick time to pay for the time off of work. (I spent the last of my "time off" watching my father die in hospice last spring, thank you very much, and have been living on borrowed time since.)

So, now I'm going to get yelled at by YET another doctor for not taking care of myself since I haven't been to see a gastroenterologist for the last--oh, I don't know--7 years or so, although I was diagnosed with UC in 1994 and I'm supposed to know better. And then, after the lecture, I'm going to have to make an appointment for a colonoscopy, which is basically drinking poison to clean out my GI tract and then letting a doctor stick a tube somewhere that I use as an exit only to take pictures of my empty colon to make sure I only have UC and not colon cancer.

SO NOT FAIR.