Posts

Acronyms

Karissa Pentlichuk,  BASc, IBD, AS, HT, OTS, BLD with GA, PsO, IAE, TMD, CM When I was in university, I would dream of the educational pos…

Truly Invisible

We, the collective 'we'  of Spoonie-dom, speak a lot about Invisible Disease; the illnesses that cannot be perceived by a cursory g…

General Medical Update

Here is the rundown and update as of Feb 2025.  I am currently 38 years old, turning 39 this August.  Diagnoses & Chronic Conditions: …

Symptom Catalogue

I would say that a good 90% of daily living wiith chronic illness is just unwillingly cataloguing all types of symptoms and sensations from…

Hearing Aid

It's been two weeks with my new hearing aid for my left ear.  I have moderate to moderately severe hearing loss in my left ear, presume…

What's So Difficult About Chronic Illness?

I mean, I would like to think that it's common knowledge that living with chronic illness is difficult. But is it just something we kno…

Diagnostic Years

Diagnostic years are absolutely exhausting!  A diagnostic year is when new symptoms pop up, or a change is made, which begins a cascading e…

Pouchoscopy

Alright - some good-ish news.  I had my pouchoscopy today - to look in my internal J-Pouch, check on the Crohn's, and try to figure out…

Scope Prep

I've got a pouchoscopy in the morning (scope of my internal J Pouch), so today I am prepping for it. This means fluids all day (full fl…

A Rough Year

This past year has been a pretty rough year for health.  Last September, I was removed off of a medication to explore different potential d…

Biopsy Results

My biopsy results came in today from the upper and lower scopes I had done last weekend.  There was active esophagitis and an ulcer in my e…

Esophageal Ulcer

Last week I was having major pain in my esophagus. Suspecting esophagitis (which I've had before), my family physician called in a pres…

Question Mark Disease

Living in the grey area of the medical world can be really frustrating.  I feel like I've been trapped in this grey area of health sinc…

Time & Spoon Management

Do you ever feel like most of your time is wasted being sick??  When I am going through a particularly bad spell, all I focus on is listeni…

My Moment With God

In March of 2004, I had an abdominal surgery for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, secondary to a surgery performed the year prior: after spendin…

Favourite Pleasant Surprise

Let's face it - dating with any kind of chronic illness can be incredibly difficult.  Dating with illnesses like Crohn's Disease, U…

One-Size-Fits-All

One of the biggest myths of healthcare is a one-size-fits-all approach. We are led to believe that:  Bacterial Infection -> …

Coping With Loss of Identity

It has been ingrained in us that much of our identity comes from what we do. What we do for work, what our hobbies are, what we do …

Coping With Long Wait Times

This is a topic that was liked by multiple people to write about - and it's such an important topic:  How do you cope with …

Daily Life with IBD

What is it like to live with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (like Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's Disease...)?  The short version…