Recovery-ma to the niece, Calli!

Importing from another thread.

Jen, when you came back and told us about your tough health year, it didn't seem like the right time to talk about ours. C was diagnosed with Crohn's in January of 2019. We put off the diagnosis too long because his symptoms weren't typical and remitted often (and once it was clear there was an ongoing problem then had to wait to see a specialist).

He responded to treatment, but the damaged parts of his gut were never going to recover and he was hospitalized a couple of time for intestinal abscesses. He was on Cipro and Flagyl (at the same time) and a liquid diet for a few months prior to surgery, so all that combined with the reality of his chronic illness made things just awful. His strictures were so bad, the doctors said his small intestine had "fecalized," and was a "war zone."

In October 2019, he had his ascending colon, ileum, and part of his small intestine removed (more than 60cm in all). He's doing so much better, but he was still worried about the what-ifs, when he returned to campus in January of this year (but was only there for about six weeks, because of the pandemic).

Anyhow, I get very mama bearish about the subject.

Sorry for the delay. Mom called while I was typing. She just found out her cousin died over the weekend.

I’m glad your son is doing better, Topic!Cindy. It sounds like a heck of a rough road.

Thanks, Calli. It was.

My cousin's wife who just recovered from Covid is also a teacher.

Middle K? Special K?

Heh. We added the middle names when necessary.

Oh, I'm sorry about your Mom's cousin, Cindy. Well, your cousin, too.

Thanks for sharing that, and I'm sorry your son had to go through such a traumatic time and has to deal with the ongoing condition. We differ in cause but had similar types of removals, it sounds like; I imagine we share some of the same future what-ifs and day-to-day planning challenges. I can completely understand why you wold get mama bearish. Yeah... my descriptors were "necrotized" and "adhered" - super not how you want to think of your insides. I will keep C in my thoughts now.

Timelies all!

No repeat names in my family or Gary's, due to the Jewish thing of not naming kids after living people.

I'm a Jr., so as I grew up, it was Big Fred and Little Fred, or sometimes Fred and Freddy. Complicated by the fact that my mother had a brother named Edward, whose oldest son is also a Jr. Leading to cousins Eddie and Freddy. And did I mention that Eddie and I were born 23 days apart?

Also in the childhood neighborhood were father James R. and son Jon R. I am told that things were confusing when mail was addressed to "J. R. Lastname."

Leading to cousins Eddie and Freddy. And did I mention that Eddie and I were born 23 days apart?

That's really cute. Two of my mom's brothers were Freddy and Teddy (an Edward too, not a Theodore).

My mom had an uncle named Uncle Son.

My grandfather and brothers only ever called their sister "Sis" and so she was Aunt Sis to her many nieces and nephews and their kids.