The die area has finally finished.
I think.
Three weeks to the day since the last attack, eight months of ridiculous torment before that, virtually every finger of food likely to set it off.
Yes, die area, pidgin cellphone talk for that medical condition which predictive text cannot handle, possibly because I cannot spell it to begin with.
Who can? My friends have come to know the phrase well.
I drained Google dry trying to find a cure for die area.
Everyone recommended the BRAT diet - bananas, rice, applesauce and toast - but I may as well have eaten a crayon.
Nothing changed.
The naturopaths came out with a host of gobbledy gook, some of which I touched with the tip of my finger at health and organic food shops.
I thought about crystals under the pillow, then slapped myself in the face and moved on.
I contemplated blueberries, too expensive, and nutmeg, but a terrible experience at high school when some waterhead told me you could get high by eating a tablespoon of nutmeg meant nutmeg was out of the question.
I avoided spicy food and fruit; the months ticked by.
On the odd occasions when rationality kicked in, I realised the die area was part of the Clostridium difficile virus I picked up in January, but I am nothing if not someone who believes he can conquer disease with positive thought, self-medication and Google.
Why was The Big Guy giving me such a tough year? To be fair, the eye operation in July gave me sight I had never experienced in my life, but it was almost as if he had decided that was all I deserved for one calendar year.
He must have seen all those murky things I did as a teenager and young adult, even though they had been done when Big Guy XXI was in charge, it was Big Guy XXV now.
I imagined The Disease Allotment Committee up there considering my case : What about Colbert? Oh don't worry about Colbert, he's as stoic as stone and doesn't give a nob of ghee about pain.
We handed him his sight back so let's just keep him on the bog for the immediate future, let's just continue to make every eating experience for him a pain in the bum.
Literally.
And so it came to pass.
Literally.
I was gobbling Loperamide pills like airline peanuts through August, and then The Disease Allotment Committee whanged me back into hospital after a blood test calcium reading convinced every doctor in the building I should be having convulsions.
Three new drugs later - my seven-day pillbox now weighed more than Kees Meuws - the calcium was normal.
And the die area had finally finished.
I trawled Google to see if calcium supplements can bring about such a powerful and life-changing thing.
Unlikely, said Google.
Maybe the fact I had thrown my hands in the air and was eating all manner of ill-chosen nosh, even the new McDonald's Mighty Angus Burger, well, the ads ("A symphony of cheese and gently cured bacon, with hints of zesty relish") were irresistible, had stymied the die area in the same way that snake venom fights snake bite.
Maybe it had just finished naturally and The Disease Allotment Committee hadn't even been consulted.
As Oscar Wilde once said, and I'm paraphrasing, let no logic ever come between The Mighty Angus Burger and the workings of the human bowel.
It's good to be feeling a lot better, it's good to be quaffing anything that's not bolted down and not fearing what will happen in one hour.
The blood pressure has suddenly gone way high, though you probably get that with the Mighty Angus Burger.
But there will be pills for that.
I think.
Pills that may change my body dramatically all over again.
Maybe I will grow 50cm and finally play basketball.
I can't wait.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
