Scott- simply put, Bingo on your last post. The human instinct is to try and justify mental illness. My paternal Grandmother was a manic depressive who had shock therapy. Back in the 1950s that was how they treated it. Even as a 9 or 10 year old I knew something wasn't right with her head because she would go from a cheery mood to unconsolable crying in the bat of an eyelash and for no apparent reason. She did not have IBD. The family loved her and came up with all kinds of justifications for her mental illness and the subsequent cancer that killed her at age 64. Most of the theories on her mental illness were preposterous and not science based, but it didn't matter because we all loved her as she was. Sadly, in the months before she died at age 64 of pancreatic cancer, she repeatedly told me, then her 12 year old grandson whom was entrusted to her care as de facto daycare provider on weekends, that "God was going to take her away." She said this repeatedly to me in the months before she was diagnosed and well before she even had any symptoms. To this day I don't know if that was the mental illness talking to me or whether she actually knew something. Despite her issues, she was the best Grandma a 12 year old kid could have.