Mulligan

 
I cannot emphasize enough how much a strong, fighting mentality helps deal with Crohns.  I have always considered myself a fighter.  I think I have probably told my daughter Jill 1000 times in her life to "never give up" on anything.  Having said that, when I started to get sick again after my last surgery in December 2002, I felt that strong, fighting will starting to leave.  It was now March of 2003 and I just could not believe that 3 months after surgery, I was sick again.  I was single, living by myself and rarely left the house.  I basically went through the motions every day, just waiting for the next day to come, hoping I would feel better, but not doing anything to help.  It was at that point that I decided to get a dog.  I really don't remember what triggered the thought, however, I have always loved dogs and never had one of my own.  I guess I figured, "better late than never".  On April 12, I came home with an 8 week old female English Bulldog pup that I named Mulligan.  To this day, I still say that dog saved my life.  She needed me and I always had to be there for her.  She gave me back that fighting spirit that was beginning to slip away.  I certainly had family that loved and needed me but this was different, she gave me the kick in the ass that I needed.  At this point in time I knew I needed to really do something drastic to get myself better.  One of the first things I did was to think about the past 35 years of dealing with Crohn's and the things that had caused flare ups.  Since I first got sick, I had always kept a food diary.  Unfortunately, there was nothing really consistent in the diary.  Sure, there were certain things that would almost always cause a flare up, however there were many inconsistencies.  The one thing in common in all of the food diary's I had kept was right in the title...FOOD.  It was that day that I made a drastic change in my diet.  I am going to get into the specifics of what I do every day of my life in my diary, which will begin on January 1, 2012.  Just know that my search for liquid meal replacements that I would best tolerate began that day.  By the end of April, the Crohns went into remission.

The story of Mulligan has a sad, yet, in many ways, a happy ending.  I am not a very religious person, however, I know that Mulligan was put on this planet to be my guardian angel.  Over the next year and a half as she grew into an adult dog I got healthier every day.  In the summer of 2005 I met my future wife, Emily.  We bought a house and moved in together in December of 2006.  Emily has 2 boys and also had a dog (a Welsh Springer Spaniel named Hudson).  All of us were very happy when in the summer of 2007 I found a lump on Mulligans belly.  It was cancer and she left us in November of 2007.  I truly believe that she saw that I was in so much of a better place than the day I took her home.  She knew that her job was done.