The Ms. Chronic Disease of America Pageant: Call for Contestants

So lately I've been getting quite a few emails from ladies who question/debate my claim that Crohn's Disease is the sexiest autoimmune disease on the planet. I don't know how the status of a disease that gives you such delights as the stoma (I miss mine soooo much) and the fistula can be questioned, but evidently there are some people who think that putting Crohn's Disease on such a high pedestal is just plain crap. Pun intended.

The way I see it, the only way to settle this dispute once and for all is to put our collective ailments up against each other, American style. I am speaking, of course, about a beauty pageant!!!!!!!

This post serves as the OFFICIAL (and everything we do around here is super official) call for contestants for the first annual

MS. CHRONIC DISEASE OF AMERICA E-PAGEANT !!!

(insert toe touches and wild cheers of jubilation)

Contestants will be judged on their poise, grace, debilitating disfigurements, and thickness of their medical charts in inches. The ability to laugh at oneself and find humor in the unfortunate is a must.


Want to know if you're eligible? Click HERE or HERE to find out!

If you have Lupus, MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Diabetes or something rare and hard to pronounce (Dermatomyocitis anyone?), step forward and let your diseased self shine! This pageant is for you girl!!!

Leprosy? Hypochondria? Prone to adult acne or irrational temper tantrums? We're non-discriminatory when it comes to the afflicted. We'll take you too!

If you want to be a contestant in this pageant, e-mail me at themeanestmom at gmail dot com, subject line "pageant." I'll be taking submissions through the end of the week, at which point, a committee comprised of chronically ill women in various stages of physical and emotional decay will select the finalists. Then there will be voting, tears of joy, a plastic crown, and bragging rights FOREVER.

Just think: this could be YOU, only with chubby Prednisone cheeks, a spare tire, and a weird rash on your rump. Can it get any better?

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For those of you who think this pageant is in bad taste, I totally agree. There is nothing more tacky than talking openly about Irritable Bowel Sydrome and its friends.


I stand corrected.

Medical History Forms

Next to reading information pamphlets about obscure diseases and drinking water from paper cones, my favorite thing to do in a doctor's office waiting room is to fill out medical history forms.

What I like even better than filling out the ten-page get-to-know-you-and-your-diseased-ancestors questionnaire that the Dermatology Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital hands out is filling out the same form every single I visit the clinic, which happens to be about every three months.



At my most recent visit on Monday, I decided to make things easy on myself and wrote "N/A" at the top of each of page and drew a line down to the bottom.

"We really need you to fill this out," the nurse told me when I got to the exam room.

I declined on account that I consider questions about pacemakers and numbness in my limbs to be irrelevant to the Crohn's Disease-induced rash on my neck. All I wanted was a pill to make it go away, but I would settle for a topical cream or a strong animal tranquilizer.

By the time the doctor came in to see me, I had already decided out of principle (what principle, I'm not entirely sure) to plead the Fifth on every question asked of me. I was willing, however, to put principle aside if the good doctor was willing to part with a little personal information of her own. In particular, I wanted to know where she got the gigantic diamond on her left hand (new since my last visit), plus who gave it to her and when.

Unfortunately, my doctor isn't a bargaining kind of woman, nor is she as free with stories about her personal life as I would prefer.

"You still don't have any metal devices implanted anywhere in your body?" she asked, ignoring my questions about her upcoming nuptials.

I shook my head and looked out the window.

"Are you on any medications?" she continued.
I gave her a blank stare.

"The last time you visited us, you were on six," she said flatly.

I shrugged my shoulders. If she wasn't going to tell me where she was going on her honeymoon or if her wedding dress was strapless or off-the-shoulder, I wasn't going to tell her about the new medication I was taking.

Just when I thought that I had frustrated the physician to her breaking point, the doctor dropped a bomb on me. "I can't write you a prescription for that rash," she said, pencil and prescription pad in hand, "Until I know if you have experienced any unexplained weight gain or loss in the past three months."

I may be a little slow to the draw, but I know a trap when I see one. If I answered this question, I was pretty certain that an inquiry about the date of the first day of my last menstrual cycle would follow.

Out of 'principle,' I decided that I can live with the rash a little while longer, even if it means that people will continue to mistake my throat for a cat's scratching post.

****
P.S. Thanks for the suggestions of how to get rid of my unwanted house guests, but they may be unnecessary. Yesterday, the fifth grader who lives in the house behind mine told me that she is trying to talk her mom into buying her a small rodent for her birthday, preferably a hamster or hairless gerbil. I asked her if would like a mouse with superpowers instead and her eyes lit up with excitement. "If you can catch it, you can keep it," I told her. The girl is thrilled beyond belief with the possibility of owning a magical beast. The girl's mother: not so much.

Prednisone

The other night my phone rang at 8:30pm. Normally I wouldn't pick up at such an ungodly hour, but I didn't recognize the number, so of course I did.

"I have a rectal fissure!" whispered the raspy voice at the other end.

I sighed with relief. Thankfully it wasn't some weirdo calling me in the middle of the night; just a stranger with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

"Who is this?" I demanded.
The woman on the line identified herself as a friend of a friend of a friend from the community pool. I had never officially met her, but I remembered her gold lamé swimsuit. She had heard through the grapevine that I was an expert in bleeding butt ulcers and wanted to meet in person to discuss hers.

I told her to meet me in back of the local 7-11 in ten minutes. I would be wearing sunglasses and driving a black sedan.

The woman did not show up wearing her gold swimsuit, but she did look pretty darn good for just having been diagnosed with Crohn's Disease.

I complimented the woman on her appearance before telling her that Prednisone would change all of that.

"Steroids make you F-A-T," I said authoritatively. The drug also makes you grow facial hair and gives you blurred vision, adult acne and stretch marks, but I kept all of this to myself. I didn't want to ruin the surprise.

"I knew that's what you were going to say," she said, nodding solemnly. The woman was taking the news so well that I thought that she also would be receptive to my thoughts on various brands of adult diapers.

I was wrong.

"My life is OVER!" she wailed.
"That depends on how you look at it," I replied and started to giggle.

I could tell by the woman's facial expression that it wasn't a good time to ask if she wanted to sell me her swimsuit. I'm not that worried though. After two weeks on 60 milligrams, she'll change her mind.

For more information about Crohn's Disease and its sexy relatives, visit CCFA:

http://www.ccfa.org/

Name My Baby...Please!!!!

At 34 weeks and change, I am beginning to get a bit panicky over the fact that we still don't have a name for this baby. We don't even have any real possibilities. So...it is with mostly (see below) open minds that we come to you for help, guidance, and assistance. Please help!

The Rules:

-The baby is a boy!

-The name must start with a hard "C" or "K" (no Charles or Cecil, for example). We thought about branching out to other letters of the alphabet, but then realized that doing so would enable this child to pretend with relative ease that he isn't part of our family. We prefer that this child be resented by his older siblings for something more important, like being given a 12pm curfew when he is eleven (can you tell that I am an oldest child?!).

-It is preferable, though not mandatory, that the name be one that is easily mispronounced or likely to be mistaken for another, more common name. My kids really like it when they are called "Amber," "Collin," and "Courtney." I similarly enjoy being called "Jan," "Jenna," "Janet," and "Janice."

An acceptable alternative to an easily mispronounced name is a name that rhymes with an embarrassing body part, a food product, or sounds like "colon" when it is said real fast. Since I have Crohn's Disease (a gastrointestinal disorder), I would like nothing better than to name my child after the part of my digestive system that was removed when I was a teenager. But my husband says "no." He also turned down "Crohn," "Colostomy," and "Colorectal" for similar reasons.

While it is impossible for your names to be as good--or disturbing--as my initial selections, I am genuinely excited to see what you come up with. I've checked out many of your blogs and have seen firsthand what cute (and cool) names you've come up with for your kids. Please work your magic for me!