ah yes, the ever fluctuating delima. It's important to think positive and yet one is so irritable with irritable bowels how in the world do we manage.Some days are definately more challenging than others.I watch a lot of good movies when I'm in a really dark mood. Fun stuff, funny stuff. Stuff that will make me laugh no matter what. Oh the pain is still there and the ordeal is still there but to laugh out loud if only for a moment is good medicine.I don't wanna be blissed out.... I just want to laugh again.When I was fresh out of my emergency surgery for a humdinger of an impaction,I still had to remain in the hospital for a number of days to get the rest of the problem out of my gut that the colon surgeon couldn't reach with his tool.So there I was all hooked up to the I.V. and the catheter and they had finally given me some demerol and phenegran before I had to drink a gallon of golytely because all the magnesium citrate was simply not budging anything,and when the whole thing began to move, It still felt like giving child birth with out pain meds.So there I was in my wonderful hospital gown and my roots needing a good color job and stinking of things no human should stink of and still be living and there was my brand spankey new husband of a few months sitting in that stench with me and there he was as I was wailing and crying and carrying on and he proceeds to tell me the worst jokes no one ever wants to hear and suddenly the whole scene of me and the toilet and the pain and my husband and the stench was just crazy and I couldn't help it.... I looked at my husband trying so hard to make me laugh that I had to laugh and I laughed until everything simply passed away and the next day, thank God, I went home. who knows, maybe I was finally just hysterical and I went over the edge for a while into the land where everything is the most huge asurdity one can imagine or not imagine.So yes, there are truly some very dark and dreary days.But when I can find my self laughing again it's a good day regardless of the pain.Kamie