The United Colon Vlog

If you are looking for a concise and complete reference book on all major areas of inflammatory bowel disease, check out Jill Sklar’s the First Year: Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed (2007). This book is currently in it’s second edition, and while the title is a bit cumbersome, the information inside is useful to most IBD patients.

Since this book is part of a “First Year” series of books on medical issues, the book’s format walks the reader through various information they need to know in their first year of having IBD. It starts with chapters for the first seven days, followed by the first four weeks, and finally each month thereafter until month 12. This book provides information on a large range of topics, including medicines, alternative treatments, complications, surgery options, coping with depression, dealing with pregnancy, and the role of nutrition. This book taught me a lot that I didn’t know and I occasionally go back to it as a reference when a viewer talks to me about some sort of treatment or medicine that I am not familiar with.

However, the “first year” format of the book is entirely pointless. The chances that somebody with IBD would start reading this book the first day they were diagnosed with IBD is slim at best, though the information contained in the first seven days chapters (the first third of the book) is valuable nonetheless.

Additionally, there is no reason to wait until a certain month into your disease to read a chapter that may be relevant for you. Example: Sex, fertility, and pregnancy issues are discussed in months 6 and 7, but chances are your first questions about this issues won’t come up exactly at that time. Additionally, information on traveling with IBD doesn’t come up until month 9, but what if you have to travel before then? Instead, one should either read the book through cover to cover in a week or keep it on the shelf as a reference.

And finally, this is nitpicking but throughout the book Sklar enhances her somewhat dry and technical prose with anecdotes from others who suffer from IBD. While the anecdotes on their face add something to the education, almost all of the people quoted are women. I made of list of all the people referenced in the text. On the women side we have stories from Sunni, Jenny, Lynn, Amy, Jerri, Michelle, Vickie, Rachel, Jacy, Emily, Karen, Peggy, Bonnie, and Lindsey.

On the men side we have stories from Tom and Mike.

Overall, if you want some objective and focused literature on different medicines, treatments, and technical aspects of IBD–information that I have a hard time presenting–check out this book.

Rating: 4/5

Keep fighting,
~Dennis