Starting Strong in 2008

For the past 5 days, I have had Crohn's flare ups every evening, like clockwork. Some have been early in the evening, some after supper, but all have been extraordinarily painful and bloody, for some odd reason. I am unsure if I've been flaring because of stress again, or if it is because of all the holiday foods I've been eating alone and at social gatherings, where I must trust the hostess to know if the foods have dairy or eggs in them.
Yesterday was the first day of this week that Work It Out was open for classes, and, in a bit of rum luck, my Crohns started flaring with extreme colon pain right at 5:25 pm, so I was unsure whether I could get it under control in time to make it to Boot Camp class at 6:30, or whether I'd be able to 'gut out' the class at all.
So I took two Aleve and said a prayer to whatever exercise gods there are, and drove to class anyway, with the tape in my head of my father saying "Thank you for being so strong, DeAnn" over the holidays ringing in my head. He said he has a photo of my grandmother, Alta Gayle, and her mother Blanche Morrow and myself side by side on his desktop, as he likes to look at the three strongest women he's ever known. I found myself being thrilled and humbled to be in such company, as I know my great-grandmother raised 10 children by herself after her husbands untimely demise, and none of them starved or were mistreated in any way, and all were literate. My grandmother Gayle was an extraordinary woman who gave birth to 3 of her four children on her kitchen table without help from a midwife. She cut my fathers umbilical chord with a butcher knife, wrapped him up and stuck him in an improvised sling and went back to work in the corn fields. When my father had a terrible asthma attack at age two, my grandmother sat up with him for 24 hours straight, breathing for him and holding him over steam to keep his lungs open. She saved her 'pin money' from the sale of eggs, pies, sausages and other speciality meats (they had a meat locker and butchered many of their own Black Angus cattle for themselves and the surrounding Amish and Menonite farmers) to send my father to college for four years at Iowa Wesleyan. She endured an abusive husband and all manner of terrible weather and farm crisis, plus a bout of breast cancer in her forties, which she survived by 45 years. To my mind, my grandmother, great-grandmother and my mother are all vastly stronger women than I will ever be. They could all cook better than I can, too, and run a household, raise a family and still bring in money by working outside the home or selling handicrafts or food items. They did these things as a matter of course, and did not complain or whine about it.
I, on the other hand, have kvetched mightily about all the setbacks I've had, and I struggle every day to keep it all going. I can barely cook, though I can bake sweets and such. I only have one child to raise, and doing so becomes more difficult the older he becomes and the more schoolwork he bemoans. But I am determined and stubborn as a badger, so I continue to try and live up to my matriarchal heritage, and not wimp out when I am in pain.
With all that in mind I went to boot camp class hoping I'd be able to make it through half the class without having to run to the restroom. I surprised myself by making it through the whole class and focusing on completing each exercise to the best of my ability, instead of thinking about the cramping of my wretched colon. By the time I'd finished the last 20 abdominal crunches-from-hell, I actually felt better than I had at the start of class. Perhaps the endorphins that started up when I began to sweat were putting out the colonic flames, but I don't know that for certain.
However, last night I was unable to sleep through the night because the cramps and diarreha began to take their toll, and I had to take one-fourth of a Percoset to get some rest and stop the pain this morning.
At any rate, I am proud of myself for not taking the easy way out, and staying at home with a heating pad on my belly. I went to exercise class to keep my promise to myself to be strong, and get stronger every day. I don't think the ghosts of my grandmothers would have it any other way.