I’ve discovered the joy of Connie Willis (definitely my favourite author of the year) and been thrilled by Mistborn. I’ve loved the C J Sansom books (who wouldn’t love mysteries set in Henry VIII’s reign) and my iPad has given me access to some amazing comis. I got so caught up in The Magicians and Mrs. Quent that I had to order pizza instead of cooking one night so that I could finish it. Diana Wynne Jones kept me reading late into the night and a group read finally got me through Northanger Abbey.

I’m a bit divided about my favourite books of 2011, but here are the main candidates:

Daughter of Time – Joshephine Tey
Mistborn: The Hero of Ages – Brandon Sanderson
Soulless – Gail Carriger
Doomsday Book – Connie Willis (and her other books, except that would be half the list)
The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
Unnatural Issue – Mercedes Lackey
Dissolution – C J Sansom
Mastiff – Tamora Pierce
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
Astonishing X-Men Vol 3. Issues 1-6 – Joss Whedon and John Cassady

The worst books of 2011 is easier, although they weren’t dreadful, just not that brilliant:

Outlander – Diana Gabaldon
Septimus Heap Book One: Magyk – Angie Sage
Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine (September 2011)
Virals – Kathy Reichs

My thread for the 75 books for 2012 on LibraryThing is here so follow along for next years books if you’re interested!

2011 basically sucked for me. I won’t lie. Any year that has an emergency hospital admission in the first month and the diagnosis of a severe chronic illness is never going to go well. I’ve spent most of the year on steroids and now take a ton of pills and injections to keep things at bay.

While the UC diagnosis did at least finally give me access to lots of help and doctors who are eager (and wonderful) carers for me, it did also make my life a bit more complicated and I ended up cancelling most of the trips and fun plans for the year due to flare-ups. When you add in all the things that I couldn’t do due to my back, you end up with a year that did not have many trips or fun days out and consisted of a lot of hospital trips, tests, needles and bad news.

Thankfully the last six weeks has been better: I’m in remission (I hope, we need to discuss the recent stomach cramps in the new year) and my back has eased off a lot since late November.

I’ve written a bit during December, for the first time in months, and my Christmas has been so much better than last Christmas.

All of this gives me hope that 2012 is going to be a lot better than 2011. So here’s to the end of a sucky year and the start of what will hopefully be a fantastic year!

If you’re perusing Ellie’s page right now, I’m planning on aiming at the Mixing Bowl, probably going for 12 categories. This is going to be the place-holder until I can get more details put in

Edit January 2 2012: Added categories and potential reads!

1. CLASSICS

Candidates:  The Woman in White, Twenty Years After

2. BIOGRAPHY

Candidates: Henry VIII biography, William Rufus biography

3. HISTORY

Candidates: Many potential ones, including Medieval Intrigues (Ian Mortimer), the book on the history of the Church 200-1000AD that I got for Christmas, Britain in the Middle Ages (Frances Pryor), The Templar Knights in Britain (Evelyn Lord)

4. MODERN FICTION

Candidates: Need to find something for this

5. GRAPHIC NOVELS AND MANGA

Candidates: So many to choose from!

6.  CRIME AND MYSTERY

Candidates: Possibly Case Histories (Kate Atkinson). I read a lot of mysteries so I’d like to use a new author/series for this one

7. ROMANCE

Candidates: The Secret Mistress (Mary Balogh), No Proper Lady

8. SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

Candidates: So many!

9. TRAVEL

Candidates: A book that a friend gave me about a journey from Scotland to Canada or may Eccentric Guide to Oxford

10. POETRY AND DRAMA

Candidates: Wilfred Own

11. SCIENCE AND NATURAL HISTORY

Candidates: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

12. CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT

Candidates: So many to choose from!

Normally I’d title this one “I aten’t dead (still)”, but I suspect that I’ve used that title too often…

I’m not, though. Dead, I mean.

It’s been a weird year, largely featuring my battle to get the colitis into remission, which has involved several rounds of steroids and a variety of increasingly powerful drugs. Thankfully we’ve finally got there and I’m now on some lovely strong immune suppressors (plus a couple of other things) and the steroids stopped three months ago.

Unfortunately the stopping of the steroids meant the return of the back pain. That is being investigated. Ugh.

Still, looking at how ill I felt this time last year, I think that I’ve still made progress. At least I’m able to eat normally again and retain my food, which I think we can all agree is an important thing. I’m slimmer than I was, but at least I’m here

What else have I been up to? Not a lot. The big trip that I’d planned in September had to be cancelled due to another flare so much of the last few months has been pretty quiet.

I’ve read lots of books, become a (bigger) TV addict (thank you, Netflix in my Wii, DVD manufacturers and my new iPad with BBC Global iPlayer) and achieved very little knitting. Professionally has been better: despite all the illness, doctor/hospital visits, tests and drugs, I managed to get promoted at work and we successfully released a big bit of software last month. Not too shabby, I think.

So, why have I finally dusted this thing off? Well, it’s easy – books!

And maybe, TV!

As I am pretty terrible about updating on things like what I’m doing and how my life is, why don’t I fill in the gaps with book nattering? My page for this year’s books is here and I’ll be setting up something for 2012 soon.

Also, I’m doing a book challenge next year so I need to get myself signed up and a thread started for that. So much reading to do!

Good thing reading is my first big love

My trip to England was lovely and the convention was fantastic. It returned me refreshed, renewed and enthusastic for all the things that I’d been not doing or thinking about while I was sick. I read some excellent, amazing books (I’m on a good book roll right now) and was feeling thoroughly ready to tackle the world again.

Then I got the news from my specialist that my colitis was not in remission and seemed to be prednisone dependent. As my symptoms (the bleeding most noticably) had returned when we tried to taper down the pred, I had to concurr. This meant that our plan to taper off the pred and introduce a nice, cheap, easy-on-the body maintenance drug was not going to work. Yup, pretty devestating news. I’m now waiting to hear whether my insurance company will fund an insanely expensive biological immuno-suppressant called Humira, which has the advantage of kicking in fairly quickly, or whether I’ll have to use the cheaper, non-biological drug azathioprine, which takes several months to reach theraputic levels. In the meantime, we’ve bumped the prednisone back to high levels and I’m dealing with the side-effects (acne, gastric reflux, yay) while also dealing with the anemia from my heamoglobin dropping due to bleeding.

Mostly, this has involved insane levels of exhaustion and me turning into a crazy person obssessed with everything I eat in case that’s the thing that’s killing me and OMG what am I doing to myself?

My specialist keeps reassuring me that this is nothing I’ve done to myself, this is not my fault, and I could be not eating anything at all and I’d still have active colitis. My disease is severe and extensive, but it’s not something that I can fix by diet or by not eating or by turning into a crazy obssessed lunatic.

He may not have come out and said the bit about being a crazy obssessed lunatic. He’s far too nice for that. But it was certainly something he would have said if he wasn’t so lovely.

On Friday, I had a slight existential crisis in the middle of the grocery store. I was exhausted, to the state of being a burnt out zombie, and the exhaustion had been doing funny things to my brain all day. I was depressed, feeling rather desparing and defeated, and it all seemed to fall on me in the middle of the grocery store.

You see, I had this plan to make a Sachertorte at the weekend. For that, I needed ground almonds. It didn’t occur to me until I got to the store and stared at the baking shelves that maybe I’d need to grind my own damn almonds. As I stared at the shelves that had no ground almonds whatsoever, I had a very silent tantrum and viciously crossed all the cake ingredients off my list including the eggs that I needed.

After all, should I really be making and eating cakes when I’m sick? Is that contributing to the being sick thing?

Yup, I had a silent melt-down over the unfairness of it all in the baking aisle of Sobey’s.

I then proceeded on with my list and finally found myself in the freezer aisle, because I had ‘pizza treat’ on my list. This was where I had my second “little moment” and nearly wanted to cry because I couldn’t buy a pizza because I was just too damned tired to deal with left-overs.

That’s right, my world collapsed because I was too tired to deal with the concept of left-overs from a frozen pizza that I hadn’t even bought yet.

Then I spent five minutes just standing in the middle of that aisle, feeling rather unsure of what the hell I was doing or even who I was and generally just feeling like everything was pointless and fruitless and other “less”s. It was all rather sad and silly.

Finally, I pulled myself together, abandoned all thoughts of pizza, paid for the groceries I had (er, not much after removing the cake ingredients, the pizza, and the cleaning products they didn’t have from my list) and went home. For about ten seconds, I thought about ordering pizza in and that overwhelmed feeling came over me again at the thought of all the left-overs.

It seems so silly now, but the thought of dealing with left-overs was pretty much killing me. My brain was obviously fried.

So instead, I put away the groceries, dealt with the laundry, fed the cats and went to bed at 6pm on a Friday evening.

I woke up around midnight, ate a bowl of cereal, and went back to bed until 8am the next morning.

Thankfully, all that sleep did the trick and I woke up feeling happier, stronger, and much more able to deal with everything.

And then I said “Fuck you” to the ulcerative colitis and went out to buy groceries at my boutique grocery store including eggs so that I could make a Mexican chocolate torte.
</cut>

That is how I had a huge, silent, existential melt-down in the middle of the grocery store.

The end result is that I decided that worrying about whether my eating habits are contributing to the UC is just making me crazy. So I need to stop doing that. My solution? A weekend of cooking and baking!

On Saturday, I made shepherd’s pies. One was for my dinner (om nom nom) and three went into the freezer for easy meals on busy nights.

I also baked a Mexican chocolate torte, which includes pecan nuts and cayenne pepper and thus is something I should probably avoid. Pah! Before my diagnosis, there were no specific trigger foods that made me feel worse/better. Why am I therefore limiting my diet so much now that I have a diagnosis? Particularly when my specialist said that there’s nothing dietarily that will be affecting me? I think that I’ve spent too much time on IBD/UC forums, trying to figure this thing out, and everyone on those forums is diet and food elimination crazy.

So, Mexican chocolate torte. And because the torte is at its best a day or two after baking, I bought myself a little lime pie in chocolate pastry crust thingy at the grocery store for my Saturday dessert. Oh, so good.

For Sunday, I had spotted some new Yukon gold potatoes at the store and some salmon. Well, the new potatoes were just aching to be roasted with garlic, rosemary and olive oil and the salmon was crying out for dill and lemon so that was my Sunday supper, with some lovely steamed veg. For the first time in my memory, the potatoes were the best part of the meal. They were so incredibly amazing that I’m determined to repeat them next weekend. Wow, so good.

And then, with my evening cup of tea, I got to finally sample my torte. Om nom nom.

So, new page. New leaf. No more crazy-making with the UC. I am eating whatever the hell I want (including fibre!) and enjoying it because all I’ve done over the last few weeks is make myself insane.

Best bit? I’ve been symptom free, including no bleeding, since Friday. So all the things that I ate over the weekend that should have hurt me…didn’t. Take that, UC!

On the day of my bloodwork (January 26th) I was feeling so tired, dizzy and breathless that I could barely stand long enough to dry my hair. It took me forty minutes to achieve that and I realised then that something might be wrong. My lovely cousin was a star and took me out to get my blood done, despite having only just finished a night shift, because I knew that I wasn’t safe to drive. Afterwards I went home and worked, reclining on the sofa a lot, because I am slightly crazy and still couldn’t quite believe that I was actually ill.

A few hours later I got a call from my doctor’s office. My haemoglobin was dangerously low and I needed to get myself to the ER immediately. I called Mum to cancel our Wednesday night Skype chat, called my cousin for a lift and checked myself into the ER.

The nurses who treated me that night told me they had never had a patient my age, with those results, able to walk into the ER. I should not have been conscious, never mind ambulatory, and if I had passed out at home my blood levels were so low that I would have been dead in a day or two. The tummy symptoms that the doctor had dismissed a couple of days before were actually symptoms of a large GI bleed and I was dying. The only reason that I hadn’t passed out was because I had lost a lot the blood gradually over several months (apart from the big loss in the final week) and so I had acclimated as my levels dropped. Thankfully the ER staff were able to pump me full of blood and saline (when they found viable veins!) and after twenty hours I was released on condition that I went straight to see a GI specialist that they had found for me.

He examined me, said that it was unlikely that I had IBS, and got me started on tests to figure out the real problem.

By the time I got home that day, my Mum had booked tickets and was due to fly in a couple of days later to look after me. I felt so much better thanks to all the transfusions that I couldn’t really understand why everyone was so worried, although when my tummy troubles returned at super-strength a day later it was lovely to have Mum around to look after me.

A solution!

The last three weeks have been a whirlwind of tests (some involving sedation, yay!), doctors and results. I have colitis (take that, duty doctor!), an auto-immune disease where the immune system starts attacking the gut. There are several forms and we are waiting for biopsies to tell us whether it is Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis, although there is no involvement outside the colon so UC is currently the favourite.

The doctor started me on high dose prednisone to suppress my immune system and allow the inflammation and ulceration in my gut to heal. I’ve been on the pred for ten days and I’m already feeling much better: my tummy has pretty much normalized for the first time in six years and I’ve got a lot more energy. In fact, I’ve got more energy than I’ve had in years. So many of the things that I’ve been putting down to “it’s just me”, “it’s because my back is bad”, “I’m imagining it” are getting better. Without being aware of it, the colitis has been making me feel really quite awful for a very long time and I had just got used to feeling that way.

Later this week, we will start weaning me off prednisone. This has to be done gradually because, in addition to supressing my immune system, the prednisone has shut down my adrenal system and it takes time for that system to recover. If I go off cold-turkey, my adrenal system won’t work and I could die. Again. When the prednisone dose is lowered enough, a maintenance drug will be introduced and hopefully that drug will stop my immune system attacking my gut with the side-effects that long-term prednisone use has. If it doesn’t, then we will go back to prednisone and repeat the process with another drug until we find the one that works.

Long-term outlook

My GI specialist is lovely and he’s relieved a lot of my fears. My uncle had Crohn’s and lost most of his bowel to it. You can imagine what I thought when I was first told what the diagnosis was! Apparently, the modern medications are much better and my GI specialist rarely has to operate on colitis patients. He is confident that it will be unlikely that I will never need surgery and I am determined to do everything in my power to make that happen. That means taking the medications he prescribes religiously, reporting any symptoms to him ASAP so that we can stop flares (which will happen) in their tracks before permanant damage is done and generally taking care of myself properly.

There is no need for me to follow any diets, my GI specialist says that he doesn’t care what his patients eat because none of the good research has shown a connection between food and colitis. It’s my immune system mistaking my gut for a foreign object, not a food intolerance. For now, until I’m healed, I just need to be careful about overly gut-stimulating food (caffeine, high-fibre or spicy foods) and even those restrictions will be gone when the medication is working.

The hardest part, for me, may be the part where I take care of myself and report any changes. So much of this has been going on for years, unnoticed, or has been dismissed by doctors that I don’t really trust myself to know what is normal and what isn’t. Re-educating myself is going to be hard but at least now I know that there is something there that does need treatment and it will be easier to insist when things don’t feel right.

My new GP started last week and I have an appointment with him tomorrow. Judging by the phone calls that I have been getting, it looks like my practice has realised that something went wrong in my care and they are trying to get their records updated and make reparations for it all. My GP will have no responsibility for my bowel issues, but he is going to need to get me a rheumatologist (for by back problems and EDS) and do a better job of monitoring my general health.

It’s been a tough few weeks (years, actually) but things are starting to look more positive than they have in a long time. As my health re-builds and my energy returns, I’m getting very excited about all the things that I will now be able to do and it seems like the future is brighter than it has been for a long time. I had not realised how tired I was, how much I had been not doing, or even how much time I had been losing to naps because it had been like this for so long. Now I will be a bit more like a regular person and I can’t wait to see where this takes me.

I had physio yesterday and, as the physio’s office is round the corner from my office, I elected to go to work afterwards. My doctor’s office is just across the road from my building so it was a good plan. Apart from spending most of the day in the bathroom and not keeping any of my food in my stomach. Argh!

The physio was disappointed that I’d been ill and thus unable to work on my core much. As working on my core tends to set off cramping, I’ve not been getting very far with my exercises. He wants me to try harder this week. Yay?

My GP left the practice in March of last year. At the time, this didn’t seem like the end of the world because I was fine, nothing was going on and the practice staff assured me that she was being replaced ASAP. My new GP starts on 7th February. Argh. So I’ve been relying on duty doctors at the walk-in clinic at my practice, which isn’t good when you’ve got active issues.

Yesterday I managed to get lucky yet again, by seeing the doctor who was leaving the practice at the end of the day and thus was reluctant to do anything that would require paperwork. Like referring me to a rheumatologist. That will be my battle when the new GP starts. The duty doc said that it will take months, maybe years, to get me a rheumy so what is a few extra weeks in the grand scheme of things?

I think she may be missing the point, but there’s nothing that I can do about it apart from trying to get an appointment with my new GP the moment he arrives.

The big reasons that I was there was to discuss my meds and discuss my stomach issues. We got nowhere on the meds, her suggestions being counter-intuitive in light of what’s causing the pain and my other issues, and she was rather less than helpful on the stomach thing.

She did, reluctantly, fill out a requisition for some lovely invasive testing because I’ve been having issues on and off for years and it may be a good idea to rule out some form of colitis. She also signed the requisition for some bloodwork to check for anaemia. I’m getting tested for a whole bunch of things, in fact, so it’s fasting bloodwork. Somehow I have to get myself to the doctor’s office tomorrow morning having consumed nothing, including my painkillers, since tonight’s supper. This may be interesting.

For my current problems, she suggested peppermint tea and a trip to the emerg if things don’t resolve in a week or so. Argh.

This morning I’ve been having flashing lights, dizziness and extreme exhaustion which I’m reasonably sure are due to my inability to process food properly for a week. I’m giving it another couple of days before I think about the ER. Just not quite sure how to drive to get my bloodwork done tomorrow if I’m still like this…

On the up side, this is a great weight loss program. I didn’t need to lose weight, but I’m going to look so sleek and slim by the time this is over. That’s got to be a bonus, right?

Yesterday I didn’t even bother with the work thing.

By the evening, I was feeling quite a lot better and rather hungry. Supper treated me well and I was feeling confident that I was better.

I decided to work from home today because I was feeling wobbly and light headed still, so being on the roads with a storm on its way in seemed like a silly idea. Breakfast seemed OK…until about an hour later when breakfast suddenly seemed like a stupid plan.

Argh.

Problem is, there is a variety of possible causes:

1) Exhaustion from sustained back pain and lack of sleep making my digestive tract partially shut down
2) My meds finally upsetting my stomach enough to cause issues
3) Exhaustion from blah blah causing an IBS flare (although I don’t think it’s ‘true’ IBS that I have)
4) An actual stomach bug

I have to admit, 4 seems the least likely. Sleeping for most of Wednesday afternoon and a lot of Thursday has made my back even more painful than normal and having to eat in order to take my meds is not making me feel happy.

I’d be able to cope with either my stomach or my back, but both together is just making life suck. Also, the not feeling safe to drive thing means that today’s planned trip to the doctor to discuss meds and insist on investigations and referrals has been postponed to Monday.

The bright spot is that the girls think it’s lovely having Mummy home all day. I just have to get through their little fluffy brains that standing on Mummy’s tummy is not a good plan.

- BossBoss has been feeling so guilty about watching me be in pain all day that he organised an ergonomic assessment for me. The occupational therapist came in today and confirmed that my workstation is pretty much perfect (I had one of these around eighteen months ago) so there isn’t much she can recommend. BossBoss will probably still feel guilty about being powerless to help me, but hopefully this will let him know that he’s doing everything he can.

- The OT told me that it’s totally appropriate to start insisting on investigations and referrals to a rheumatologist because I should not have to be in this much pain She also made me feel better about insisting on ruling out inflammatory arthritis because if that’s what is wrong, there are excellent drugs out there that will help me. Again, I’m far too young to just live like this. It was nice to get that validation.

- Yesterday I had monster Greek food cravings.

- I ate my healthy wholewheat pasta with lentil sauce anyway.

- I’m planning to drag some knitters to the Greek place for supper soon. I dream about the kolokithia (fried zucchini) and would mug someone for dolmades.

- In the midst of my terrible cravings, I got desperate and started Googling for some fried zucchini recipes. I found some oven baked ‘fried’ zucchini recipes and one of them is going to get tried this weekend. Before anyone asks why I can’t make them tonight, there is no zucchini in my kitchen. Argh!

- The pizza place just round the corner from my office sells fried zucchini sticks. It’s so tempting sometimes to just go over there and indulge. Canada is an evil place for introducing me to these delights.

- The water company sent me an overdue notice for a bill that I’d paid weeks ago. For once, I got mad rather than scared and immediately commenced with the telephone calls. Twenty-four hours later, they’ve found the payment and it’s all sorted out. I feel so productive! And brave! And proud of myself!

- It would be really bad to plan on experimenting with the fried zucchini and some baked shrimp toast (the closest I’ll get to prawn toast here) on Saturday, wouldn’t it? There must be a law somewhere about not eating an entire meal of appetizers. It just sounds so awesome and yummy…

- I’m trying to comfort myself with thoughts that at least I don’t crave sweet stuff. It’s savouries all the way. I suspect this is no healthier…

Here are those books:

1. A Suitable Vengeance – Elizabeth George
This one was an oddity, the fourth book in the series and yet set a couple of years (I think) before the other books. Havers is barely there, because of the setting, and I missed the relationship between Lynley and Havers more than I expected. This is also in the days before the established relationships, so I missed Simon and Deborah together but was also fascinated because this is the story of how they became Simon and Deborah. It’s also the book where we find out a lot of Lynley’s family secrets, the things that shape the man we know in the other books, and we get to see the uglier side of Lynley’s background. As a study of the backgrounds of all the characters and a good mystery (yes, there is a mystery here) it’s a good book but I’ll be glad to get back to the normal time period with the next one.

2. Outlander – Diana Gabaldon
A friend of mine has been raving about the Outlander books ever since I met her, so I though that I should really give this one a go. I’ll start by saying that it’s not a bad book. It’s not a literary masterpiece, but it is a step up from much of the bad writing that haunts certain sectors of the romance genre. Unfortunately, it’s also the kind of book where I danced for joy when I finally got to the end and really wished that I hadn’t stuck with for so long. The plot didn’t really capture me, there was some odd historical inaccuracies that jarred me (rationing in England did not end with the war, it was still in force in the early 50s) considering the amount research done in other areas and I could not engage with the characters enough to care for them. I suspect that this is one where some people are going to love it and other people will be a bit ‘meh’ about it. I fall into the latter camp, unfortunately.

3. Daughter of Time – Joshephine Tey
This was a recommendation from somewhere on 75 books, either a personal thread or the mysteries thread, and I loved it. I finished it last night and can easily see myself re-reading it again because there’s so much lovely historical research detail to go over again. The basic plot is that Inspector Grant has broken his leg and is on enforced bed-rest in hospital while it heals. A friend suggests that he tries his hand at researching a historical mystery and hands him a bunch of portrait re-prints to look at. Grant picks out Richard III, who has a face that does not fit with history’s most notorious murderer, and sets out with the help of a British Museum researcher to work out whether he really did kill the Princes in the Tower. The book was published in 1951 so some of the ideas were familiar to me already (I’m a bit of a medieval history buff) but some of the evidence was new to me and the way that Tey wrote it kept the investigation fascinating throughout. She managed to breathe life into the historical figures despite their existence as academic studies just as vividly as she created her fictional characters. It’s historical research presented in as a good old fashioned mystery and it works brilliantly. I’d recommend it to anyone and it’s a strong contender for going onto my favourite books of 2011 list.

4. Mistborn: The Final Empire – Brandon Sanderson
I read Elantris a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it because Sanderson does such a good job of writing epic fantasy with a bit of a twist. When this trilogy was being discussed on the 75 books threads I decided to give it a try, despite the slightly unpreposessing title, and I’m very glad that I did. The first book is epic, filled with twists and turns, never goes quite where you expected and has both a resolution and some un-resolved things that left me itching for the next book. The characters, particularly Vin, Kelsier and Elend, are beautifully drawn and they are allowed to grow as the book progresses. Sanderson uses Allomancy as his main magic in the book, the ability to ‘burn’ metals for different abilities, and it’s a wonderfully unique system of magic that really enhances the story. If you like epics and high fantasy and you want to read something just a little bit unusual then you should definitely check this one out.