Anticipation

On another note, there is finally some WARMER weather and I'm super doooooooooper excited for what this means!

Summer!
Sunshine!
BBQs!
Friends!
Christmas!
Family!
Fun!
Swimming!
Holidays!
Rivers!

Alas, I'm not sure how much of this I will be around to enjoy.

Last summer, I worked November/December, a lot.  Burnt out.  Got really, REALLY sick.  Spent the January in bed, and February recovering enough to start 2nd year of uni in March.

I have learned my lesson.  Don't work so hard.  The workplace will NOT collapse without me.  Take my medication.  Eat properly - noodles don't count.

Anyway, this is besides the point I wanted to MAKE in this blog post.

I'm excited about summer!!!  But I have some news.  I just emailed my uncle my CV, and he knows people at this fruit orchard who might hire me for the whole summer.  The catch... it's in Hawkes Bay.  Which is about 2.5 hours from where I live.  And about 3.5 hours from where most of my friends live.

So yeah.  We shall see where this goes.  I'm not sure, but I hope I do get to work, because it'll be lots of hours, and money to pay my parents back what I owe, and save for a trip next winter to Rarotonga to escape the cold.

Cross your fingers for me?  Both that it's the right decision, and that I make enough money haha.  :)

Growing Up

Sometimes I want to be more grown up.  Move out.  Have a life about which I don't really speak to my parents.  Have a long term relationship.  Have a pet.  Live in a cute apartment.  Work full time.  Be independent.  Go on dinner dates (if there is a lack of aforementioned relationship).  Be cultured.  Drink wine.

But then I remember. I like living at home.  I like talking to my parents.  I don't mind being alone.  I already have 4 pets at home.  I live in a cute house.  I don't work, to focus on my studies.  I'm yet to graduate.  I am reasonably independent; I have my own car, I can come and go as I please.  And I don't like wine.

Thus I am torn.  Do I really want to grow up?

There are some parts of a perceived "grown up" life to which I am drawn, but then these come with responsibilities, and other such unpleasantries.

I guess this is an in between phase.  

I promised myself, and my parents, that I would move out of home by the age of 25.  I have 3 more years.  I guess I should savour it.  I graduate at the end of next year.  Then that gives me a year and a half to find a job, work, save, move out, and get a life.

But then I also plan to move to Europe for a while, perhaps with my cousin Laura, dependent on timing and finances and such, sooo I don't know.

There are so many opportunities, and as I have said before, so much to do, so little time.

I guess I see people my own age, and younger, already graduated, moved out of home, being "grown ups", with careers, boyfriends with whom they have been for many years already, and they seem to have life sorted out.  They know what they're doing, what they want, who they want.  And I guess I'm a little jealous of their certainty and that they have everything sussed.  

I mean, this view that they have life sorted is a sweeping generalisation, and in fact I'm sure the people to whom I am referring in my minds eye have a myriad of problems and so forth that they simply do not broadcast, and they live in spite of their issues.

I just need to work out how to do the same.

Who I am.

Something has been bugging me about some of the people I have 'met' who share the IBD diagnosis.  The first thing they say, is along the lines of "Hi, I'm a Crohnie" or "I have UC" or something.  Like it's the first thing about them.  Like the disease defines them.  Like IBD isn't just something they have, it's who they are.  I mean, I know it's understandable in an IBD support forum, but I'm talking about outside of that.  It baffles me.

Now I don't know about you, but I find this whole thing disturbing.  I don't want to be defined by my illness.  It is not the sum of my entire being, so why would I make it one of the first things I say about myself?!  I want people to know me, and if they like me, then I will tell them about this other facet of my life.  I don't want it to scare them off in the first moments. 

I guess I feel like if it was an identifying factor of my life, it would be all consuming, and I wouldn't be me.  I couldn't be normal, because my whole being would be based on my abnormality.  And that's uncool.

I am not a Crohnie.
I HAVE Crohn's disease.

IT does not have ME.  And it never will.

So Much to Do, So Little Time

It's the ever present conundrum of life in the modern world. 

We are fortunate enough to be born into societies that are full of opportunities.  With a bit of luck, hard work, determination (or in my case, stubbornness) and searching, we can find opportunities to do things others can't even begin to dream of, and the possibilities are endless. 

Enter my conundrum.  And the conundrum of so many people I know.  Sometimes, it's simpley overwhelming.  There are so many things to do and see, but time is limited, as are funds!

If I had my way, every dream I have, every plan I make, would definitely come to fruition.  There have been many plans I made which haven't happened.  Many things I thought about doing, but never did.  I don't necessarily regret not doing them, but am instead grateful that I thought about them, and then decided against them, as it allowed me to come up with even greater plans.

Case in point is my holiday in 2009, to a 46 day 22 country Contiki around Europe.  Best time of my life.  Seriously.  Followed by (and here's where the dreaming and planning enters... not that Contiki wasn't dreamed/planned about, but that was more for me) 8 days in Salt Lake City, UT, USA.

You see, I have these wonderful friends, who I met online.  It's not as dodgy as it sounds, trust me haha.  I had never met them in real life, but I had wanted to and promised one day I would.  And then I DID!  And it was amazing.  Contiki was a last minute idea, in which I ended up with approx 7 months to save up to pay for it and my spending money.  But this plan, which started as a dream, to go to SLC to see my friends, it had always been there in the back of my mind, waiting for a time to say "Hey, now's a good opportunity to do this!". 

Finally accomplishing the niggling dream in the back of my mind was incredible.  I had a blast, and it was so nice to be able to put faces to names in person!

Anyway, back to my conundrum.  I haven't really travelled since then.  And you'll find a lot of my plans involve travel, because yes, I do indeed have the travel bug.  I'm greedy, and I want to see and do more, and I don't think I'll ever be satisfied.  However, the means and funds of doing this are limited.

But in the immediate future (my 5 year ish plan) I have the following ideas...

• Roadtrip to Whakatane with one of my closest friends Jeremy (hi Jeremy, if you're reading this!) in Feb 2013 for 5ish days - we've both never been there.
• Travel to a Pacific Island (Rarotonga, or Vanuatu or something) with my 2 CRIM friends in Winter 2013 - for 5ish days in mid-year holidays.
• Complete a postgraduate year on top of my BA; either Honours, or a Postgrad Diploma.
• Return to Malaysia (my 2nd home) for a visit after I graduate, which will be end of 2014 if I do post-grad, end of 2013 if I don't.
• Get a job and work/save/move out of home - at least 2 or 3 years.  Planned to be out of home by the time I'm 25 though :)
• Move to the UK (possibly with my cousin - our 5 yearish plans almost match up time wise, and we both want to do this! :D) and do more Europe travel and work.
• Possibly teaching English in Poland (thru AIESEC) or France for a while.

Of course, these are all ideas, but most of them WILL happen at some stage, because I've been sitting on the idea for a long time.

Just remember, you can't have goals and plans if you don't have dreams and ideas first... so get dreaming!

You Learn Something New Everyday.

Today I learned more about Crohn's.  Which, if you haven't read my past blogs, I have.  To be honest I never really knew the technicalities of it, nor had I heard of TNF.  My Dr isn't the greatest for bedside manner, including a lack of explanations.  More a "You've got this.  Here's a booklet about it.  Here's some drugs.  See you in 6 weeks" kind of guy.  Which is hard.  And not ideal. 

I met another gastroenterologist from my local hospital when I was having an iron infusion, and one of the first things he said to me was "it's so unfair, and it sucks a lot that you have this disease".  I almost cried.  The first time in 4+ years, the first time EVER that a doctor had announced that yes, indeed it did suck.  It was like verification for the feelings.  Thank you Dr Stein.  Truly.  For validating my feelings, when I thought "it mustn't be that big a deal since my Dr doesn't seem to think so, why am I so sad about it?" and felt like a freak for feeling gutted.  (This makes me think about my anthropology class this week, and feeling rules and expression rules.  Look up Hochschild if you're interested.)

ANYWAY.  The whole point of this blog, was to share some info from a link I just read about an Olympian going for a gold medal in London, who has Crohn's.  Which in itself is amazing and inspiring and beyond comprehension.  I'm so happy for her.

In this article, it gives a lovely, concise, non-jargon-filled explanation of Crohn's.  I'm always looking for ways to explain it.  So I thought I would put it here for safe keeping.

"Crohn's disease is named after Dr. Burrill Crohn who, along with two colleagues, recognized and documented the symptoms in 1932.

 

Crohn's disease is an autoimmune disease of the digestive tract that most often affects the small or large intestines, and sometimes both.

According to the CDC, Crohn's is "a condition of chronic inflammation potentially involving any location of the gastrointestinal tract, but it frequently affects the end of the small bowel and the beginning of the large bowel. In Crohn's disease, all layers of the intestine may be involved and there can be normal healthy bowel between patches of diseased bowel."

In a healthy body, the immune system creates an infection-fighting protein called tumor necrosis factor. When Crohn's disease is present, TNF is produced in excess as the immune system mistakenly identifies healthy bacteria as a foreign presence.

This causes the body to launch an attack and begin fighting the excess TNF, which leads to more inflammation, which results in more TNF.

As this internal battle takes place, it causes severe pain, abdominal swelling, cramping, bleeding, diarrhea and deterioration of the affected portion of the intestinal tract."

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/07/health/crohns-disease-explained/index.html

100 steps forward...

...1 step backwards.  A very large one.

Please just be a stumble.  Not a fall.   

I don't want a relapse, another flare, another few months of my life taken by illness. 

I know I'm still so lucky, in comparison to others.  I have little to no pain, ever.  I haven't had surgery.  I'm only on 6 pills twice a day, which are weak anti inflammatories - none of the chemo injection infusion crap that my friends are going through.  I don't have a bag.  I don't throw up much (not since my January flare).  I can eat most things.  I'm not underweight (thank you very much steroids -_- ).  I don't *look* sick.

I have so much to be grateful for.

I'm still pursuing my life at university.  I'm still getting good grades.  I'm still independent (well, as much as you can be living at home!)  I have a social life.  I'm having fun.  I've got dreams, and goals, and plans. 

If I flare up now, in semester time, I can kiss all of that goodbye.

Except the dreams.  I've always got dreams.

Please, please don't flare.

Under Pressure

*insert YouTube clip of song here*  So yeah.  Feel like I'm living in a pressure cooker, and it's not even a mad time of semester.  It's just things feel like they are bigger than they actually are, and it's like cool, just add something else to my never ending list.  

There's SO much to read, especially for my Buddhism paper, it's so overwhelming, and now my notes are needed for that class too, for disabled students who can't take their own notes... and then Anthropology readings (which is more like psychology, which makes it immensely harder and more boring) for which I have to write an assignment, and Criminology, well that's my easier subject I guess.  Because I still love it, and it relies a lot on what was learned last semester.  So I'm cruising at the moment.  Still behind on my notes though.  -_-  

Anthropology used to be my favourite subject... now I'm not enjoying it.  Maybe it's this paper, and that it's seriously psychological, and it's totally over my head (and my tutor is scary, so I don't even want to talk to her!) or maybe it's the lecturer?  I don't know.  Hal is usually pretty good, although severely disorganised.  If I can just stick this paper out, and pass, then I get to do the fun stuff next year....

But in the meantime... ARGH.

As for Buddhism, I wasn't dreading it, but I wasn't looking forward to it either.  It's not so bad.  It's growing on me.  I've already learned a lot.  But there's just SO much to read.  I keep saying this, but honestly, I can't stress this point enough.  Feels like I should be doing a Law degree with this much reading.  

Sigh.   After this semester... One more year... one more year.... one more year...