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Hello everyone! I have returned from the dead! Actually I’ve been very much alive, but the past few months have been hectic to say the least (warning: this is not so much a tasting note as a life update note, so if you’re expecting tea stop now! I’ve commented a whole lot on this bad boy before so I thought it’d be a safe one to pick. Plus, it actually does tie in at the end. I promise!)

My boyfriend was diagnosed with ulcerative collitis two years ago, when he was 20. Usually when you’re young it’s an easy disease to control but he has been in a constant flare since then—if you know anything about uc, you’ll understand how totally hellish that was for both of us. None of his medications worked, the constant steroids they had to use to control the ulcers caused crazy mood changes, and he even had some very rare traits of the disease that his doctors had never seen (like ulcers on his appendix… and skin).

This summer we finally hit our limit. The disease had overwhelmed us. Surgery is a pretty extreme solution, because it involves cutting out his colon. Yup, the whole thing… at 22. And then rebuilding it 2 surgeries down the line, but it’s kind of insane to have to do something like that at this point in our lives (though we have been together for 5 years).

His family is not exactly… traditional, you could say (okay I’m being polite here they’re kind of extremely hard to deal with) and he had to have the surgery down in Philly since his doctor is there (which was worth it, since his doctor is AMAZING), but this necessitated me staying in the hospital with him. The entire time. Thankfully they do let non “family” members (at this point I consider myself family, and so does he!) stay over so I slept curled up in a chair, living off Lipton (Lipton!) for 6 days before he got the all-clear to go home. It was horrible, hellish, yet somehow a wonderful bonding experience that brought us together closer than ever, and perhaps I’ll write more about it later. But not now!

I said this tea came into play and indeed it did, because I brought it with me! His past room at UPenn had fridge, and this is his absolute favorite tea so I brought it to cold brew for him. Alas, surgery recovery rooms don’t include fridges because they want to carefully monitor the patients’ food & drink intake so neither of us had any good tea that week. So no tea for us, because Lipton brewed in coffee-tasting water is possibly the worst beverage on the entire planet.

There is no way I can ever hope to catch up on past notes since I’ve been binge drinking tea (kind of like chain smoking, except without all the bad stuff since unsweetened tea really has no negative sides!), but I’ll try to pop by more often and catch up on all the notes I’ve missed from you wonderful people! I’d also like to thank Kittenna for reminding me that I’d suddenly vanished—forgive me, but my social media obligations have been the last thing on my mind!