Luther,

IBS took two years out of my life, I dropped everything. I couldn't even sit in a restaurant or a cafe. Looking back, it wasn't just IBS, there was depression and I was diagnosed with panic disorder as well. I lost my teaching job over it.

I fought every inch of the way back and now I am doing performance poetry. Next month I have my first booking in a London club and I am going to do it, come hell or high water. One of the poems I do is about the illness and it helps to share with an audience, coming clean so to speak.

I want you to know that there is life after IBS and all the other crumby illnesses that we fight on psych central. I know it's hard to believe, but we can come through this stuff.

Good thoughts to you.

Myzen.