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Posted 6/23/2008 3:05 PM (GMT 0)
Hi everyone,

Long time no write (again). It's been a whirlwind tour of graduate school, but I successfully defended my dissertation last week. All I have left is my internship, then I'm done with my doctorate. For those who know me, seems like yesterday that I bailed on the corporate world to go back to psychology.

Anyway, that's my excuse for my lack of involvement around here. But, I did want to put up a post about my dissertation and its findings since many of you participated in my study. For that I am incredibly thankful!

If you are interested in the results of the study, I can share them with you via email. I can't post them directly here yet since I'm working on getting the data published. I can say that perceived or "felt" stigma was present in people with IBD, and it was a predictor of several outcomes including IBD symptoms, emotional and social functioning, and if people are adherent to taking their meds or not. While the findings of this study are exciting, there is much work to be done. My sample was limited so I can't say that these results are entirely generalizable to all of IBD. I plan on continuing along this line of research for many years. I had an abstract at DDW that reported some of this as well.

I would like to again extend my thanks to those on the board who participated, and to Peter for letting me recruit people here. You've made a real difference in helping the medical/psychological community better understand the social impact of IBD. This is the first study really looking at the role of stigma in IBD. Hopefully there will be many more to follow. If I do get published, I will let you know how to get a copy of the article.

If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected]

Hope all is well with my old friends whom I've lost touch with. And welcome to the new people.
Posted 6/23/2008 5:59 PM (GMT 0)
Let me be the first to , Stigma, hand out and shake yours. Congratulations. Very proud of you. Please let us know when,not if, you get published. I want a copy....
Posted 6/23/2008 6:13 PM (GMT 0)
HAPPY DAY BETAGIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Happy dance, happy dance.

Congrats on your accomplishment almost DR. Betagirl!

I am curious where are you going to do your internship? no specifics just in general?
Posted 6/23/2008 6:41 PM (GMT 0)
Glad to see you back here. Congrats!
Posted 6/23/2008 11:28 PM (GMT 0)
Thanks Sniper. Still punny as usual scool

MMMMNavy, I'm heading to a VA here in Chicago for my internship. I was just excited to match (it's uber-competitive) let alone be able to stay home. So it'll be me and the vets for a year. Looking forward to it.

Thanks Fitzy :)
Posted 6/23/2008 11:58 PM (GMT 0)
Congratulations, Betagirl! Defending is a HUGE step and I'm so happy it went so well.

Time for a celebratory party! Well done!

Ivy.
Posted 6/24/2008 4:36 AM (GMT 0)
Gosh, I can say I knew you when......

I am so delighted that the goal line is in site. I knew you would be successful from the beginning when you first twiddled with the idea of going back to school. Way to GO!!!!!
Posted 6/24/2008 10:55 PM (GMT 0)
hey beta,

i wish i could say i helped you with the study. i must have missed the bus. even though i missed that bus, could i ask you to help me? if, when working with the vets, you notice a pattern of IBD in vietnam vets exposed to agent orange, would you let me know? this is something i have been trying to find out for a long time. dioxin is known to mess with the auto-immune system. (we ate it, drank it, breathed it, and absorbed it through our skin.) ulcerative colitis is an auto-immune disease. the govt has a convoluted backwards way of studying these things. they pick a disease and study the heck out of it for 10 years, only to rule it out, instead of gathering information from veterans and looking for a pattern. in the meantime, we're out here dying off, which is exactly what they want.

we're all proud of you! congratulations! you doin' RAGBRAI this year?

vv
Posted 6/25/2008 1:58 AM (GMT 0)
vv,
Nice to see you! I just wish the VA would acknowledge it with the same guidelines as other diseases like MS.
Navy
Posted 6/25/2008 2:58 AM (GMT 0)
hi navy! i posted to you on a thread a few weeks ago that you were involved in, but you never revisited it. occasionally i would lurk and try to catch up on some HW friends. i was particularly troubled reading about all your travails. my daughters are around your age, and it kills me to see you young people struggling with infirmities before you've had a chance to live life. they are healthy, although my youngest is headed for early health problems. i hope you are doing better. as a matter of fact, i thought about you yesterday when i was at the VA. there was a young lady there (a fairly rare occurrence) that looked like a nearly recent discharge.

i gotta be careful to not malign our VA hospital here. so far, my experience over the last 3 years has been a thumbs up. they listen, and have actually done some things for me that i woulda had a hard time getting my civilian doctors and hmo to cover. it's the agent orange commission/committee/study group/investigation that has soaked up all the federal funds allocated to the problem. the truth be told, they REALLY don't want to find any more connections, because there is now a big push by the vietnamese govt to hold us and the chemical companies responsible for the same problems there.

twas good to see you too, navy.

vv
Posted 6/25/2008 3:23 AM (GMT 0)
Congrats! We all know how hard you worked to accomplish your goal and are so glad we could help with the article! Prayers for publication! That would be soooo awesome! You know the same feeling you would get if you could eat real ice cream or something smothered in peppers & onions....yeah, I'm hungry! Anyway, my monkeys are applauding...clap...clap...clap!!!!
Posted 6/25/2008 4:13 AM (GMT 0)
woo hooo! send me a copy! :0).. how cool to be able to stay near home while doing the grunt work... thats great.. have fun and keep us posted
Posted 6/25/2008 12:40 PM (GMT 0)
Hey VV, I'm doing half of RAGBRAI this year. My internship starts at the beginning of July and I thought it'd be bad form to ask for a week off :-P

I'm actually curious what the GI world is like at the VA. I don't think it gets as much attention from what I've been told, at least at this site, especially IBD which isn't that prevalent. I'll see what I can do :)

Thanks everyone for the well-wishes. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter. I do plan on staying in the GI world as a career. Just can't get enough of poop I guess.
Posted 6/26/2008 4:51 AM (GMT 0)
good to see you return here. i haven't been around much myself.

are you joining at ames? ........ or the next night. if in ames, maybe we could meet up with you again and do dinner with you like we were supposed to last time. i might be talking out my hat here. i haven't paid any attention to the dates of ragbrai in relation to my social calendar. it might be a good practice ride for jane on her new mc. can't wait to hear what sniper has to say 'bout my social calendar..............

again, congrats, beta

vv
Posted 6/26/2008 6:05 AM (GMT 0)
hey guys, BETA especially, the GI dept here in my area for the VA is quite good in my opinion. my dr stays up to date on most new things for my CD. and the y always ask someone for a second O, if they dont know. they send a lot of the guys to the U of W since they partner with them as a teaching site.
Posted 6/26/2008 12:03 PM (GMT 0)
No, not in Ames. Probably in North Liberty but maybe in Tama-Toledo. I meant to ask, are you affected much by the floods? I was out in IA a few weekends ago in Mitchelville (which was dry) but it took forever to get from there back to the IL border. I-80 was closed so we had to take a detour. But instead of detouring like they said up to 20, we tried to zig-zag. We took 30 most of the way but it was closed in Cedar Rapids. So we did get to see how flooded that was when we went up 380. Holy cripes!

Randy - the VA's here are supposed to be excellent as well. The one I'm at is affiliated with 3 university hospitals. They just built this massive new inpatient unit. I'm certainly going to see how much IBD I can find there.
Posted 6/26/2008 3:05 PM (GMT 0)
The funny thing is that the KCVA (only place in KS (but it is really in MO) where they have a perm GI) is where I go and my GI said he has a total of three patients with IBD. My GI (now) I am pretty happy with, and he says there is just not enough cases of IBD in military folks to make it feasible.

I know what you mean about the younger ones, I just turned 30 two weeks ago and there was this 22 year old sitting next to me in the waiting room. But of course I usually get "oh are you here with your husband or father" still...LOL at least when I wear shorts I usually don't have to put up with those questions.
Posted 6/27/2008 7:27 AM (GMT 0)
navy, speaking of young guys at the VA. when i started going out to mine i was 23. by far the youngest one out there. back then there were still some ww1 guys left i got to talk too. very interesting stories they had. they are all gone now, so when you get a chance talk to some of the ww2 guys that are left.. they had it a BIT tougher than any of us wheather at war or peace.. like no AC in north africa or the middle east, no tents in the jungles, had to keep going with malaria and dysyntary. 3 weeks on a boat with 5000 other seasick guys to get to the fighting or you peacetime base. its amazing what people can endure.
Posted 6/30/2008 10:23 PM (GMT 0)
bummer, beta! i think that's gonna be a bit too far east. the boss works a little later in the evenings now and that makes it hard to get to someplace an hour away, and have any time to do anything there. no, we weren't affected, but last thursday we had a storm that brought the creek behind our home out of its banks for the first time in about 10 years. it was really freaky too, because streets were flooded uphill from us here in town. it was a torrent from there down the street to the creek.

by the way, i think you mentioned before that you knew someone in mitchellville. we are just about 5 miles away. please call us when yer gonna be there. maybe we can do dinner without all the chaos of ragbrai. i am interested in your work with vets.

i'm a little surprised that you and navy would both make reference to not a lot of ibd at the va. i know ibd isn't the only reason to have colonoscopies but, the recovery room was full when i woke up, and i know i had to wait quite a while before they were ready for me. if that day was any indication of how busy the GI section at the VA was here every day, then they must be busy.

vv
Posted 7/1/2008 1:21 AM (GMT 0)
Glad to know that the flooding isn't bad where you are at. I flat out asked how many cases my GI dealt with at the VA. Cause I wondered how many of those people where just the standard turned 50 (or the five year return) and have to get a colonscopy done.
Posted 7/1/2008 2:38 AM (GMT 0)
OMG! alert the press, I found.. Oh, hi Beta. LOL
You still biking? I've started riding again, try to get 25 miles in a week. Which is getting easier since I can no longer afford to fuel my car!
CONGRATULATIONS! Can I call you Doctor now? <G>

Sincerely,
Matthew
Posted 7/1/2008 3:20 AM (GMT 0)
VV, in my experiance talking to people at my VA GI's office , most have been there for cancer, polyps, or regular screenings. i cant remember ever talking to another CD'er there. not to say there not just have not met one.
Posted 7/4/2008 11:45 AM (GMT 0)
Hey Matthew - yep, I fell back onto the face of the Earth. At least for now. :) Glad to see you're back to biking. I'm not as intense with it this year, though I'm heading out to do a 65 miler today with some friends. That way I can pig out later.

Can't call me doctor yet. Though my dissertation is defended, so in some schools that would make me a "doctor." I technically have to finish my internship. So I have no idea what my title is. PITA is still in effect though :-P
Posted 7/4/2008 8:18 PM (GMT 0)
Congratulations, Beta!!! You say nothing about your health and your IBD but I take it you aren't doing too too bad since you're doing at least half of the RAGBRAI and have finished and defended your dissertation. Way to go, gal!
Posted 7/5/2008 12:54 AM (GMT 0)
65 miles is NOT intense? Are you TRYING to give me an inferiority complex?! LOL that is my MONTHLY average right now. Or was, but arthritis has other plans. Which I hope to thwart, I might add.

Matthew
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