EARWORMS

Flare-ups vary for each patient, and I know I don’t always suffer the same way through each one. In recent years my primary symptoms have been violent gagging, spitting up bile, diarrhea, and often times passing blood through the aforementioned diarrhea. I usually can’t tolerate food but feel hungry and nauseas at the same time. But the one symptom that has come to be my most loathed is one you don’t hear about in pharmaceutical ads or awareness campaigns and I may be the only one who experiences this phenomenon in conjunction with IBD upsets: the unrelenting earworm.

Earworms aren't actual worms, but if they were they'd look like this

For those unfamiliar with the term, an earworm is a song that you can’t get out of your head. We’ve all experienced it and we all know it’s annoying. But when that earworm burrows its way into you for several days straight, rattling around when you’re slumping out of bed at 2, 3, 4am to shomit and collapse into a shivering ball on your bathroom floor, it’s a much larger problem than most would assume.

Sometimes the offending tune is a television jingle, like this Optimum Triple Play ad that haunted my 2010 flare.

EIGHT SEVEN SEVEN, THREE NINE THREE, FOOOUR FOOOUR FOOUR EIGHT!! I would sing to myself while hunched on the toilet in the dead of night. It’s three years later and I still remember that damn phone number – it’s how I found the YouTube video to post here.

During that particular flare I was miserable every waking second. The only peace I got from my CALL YOUR MA, CALL YOUR DATE abdominal cramping and spastic vomiting was when I was asleep. Waking up without an earworm was bad enough, but IO DIGITAL CABLE MAKE A LOT OF CALLS WHENEVER YOU'RE ABLE waking up with an earworm was excruciating.

It wasn't until the next flare when I was tormented by Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" that I realized how lucky I was to have had Regaeton pirates on the mind.