Do you ever feel like IBD took soooo much from you and it is truly incomprehensible to anyone (including doctors) who haven’t experienced it first hand? That is how I feel now. I am thankfully not having IBD issues but I can’t for the life of me sleep. And it takes its toll. Big time.

I do blame ulcerative colitis.

IBD completely and totally messed up my sleep cycle. Beause of constant and frequent flaring, hospitalizations, body altering surgery,  and being on and off so many different medications, I blame ulcerative colitis. Becuase of the wide variety of symptoms (that I won’t go into again now..) that I had to experience BOTH physically and emotionally, I blame ulcerative colitis. Because I had to deal with each of those physical and emotional things UC wrecked havoc on, with huge disruptions in everyday life, no ability to formulate a routine, use of medications I never would have needed otherwise, I feel like it stole sleep from me.

I know that probably sounds silly and I admit, I am writing this rather quickly in the hopes that getting it off my chest will clear my head, but it just pisses me off sometimes. Not in a ‘I haven’t accepted this’ type of way because unfortunately (or fortunately)  I do understand fully that this is my life. I can and will find ways to improve and make things better each day but in terms of the big picture, this is it. I get that.

Sometimes I think back to my appointments with a couple of my doctors when I was 16/17. I think they knew more about chronic illness than I realized and understood more about the neurological impact it can do to a person. I’ve been on sleep medications on and off for a decade. And I am only 27. I have been on and off anti anxiety meds for about ten years which didn’t start as me taking it for anxiety. It began when UC became so bad migraines  started plaguing me daily.

When you add up all of those things, it is not a mystery I can’t sleep like a “regular” person.

But, I am grateful that I am in a better place than I have been in a long time. I know I will figure this out. It just really stucks in the meantime.