It began with being unwell, being unwell is a pain under any circumstances. Being unwell while having a chronic autoimmune disease is pain..ier? The first and probably most embarrassing sign of being unwell is waking up in a puddle of one's own faeces (Think Spud from Trainspotting). Why is that important? Every sickness that I seem to experience involves my gut, its getting harder to tell if its a cold, gastro, flu, or that my IBD is back. There are few things that I've experienced that are now as humbling as the early stages of being unwell. Something to really take the wind from one's sails.
So there's the being unwell, and not knowing what is wrong but then there's the dying part. Having had an attack bad enough to have had my large intestine removed gives me a new and slightly deeper level of paranoia about this. I am more likely to develop cancer than the normal person but in understanding probability and large numbers, I know it's not a given.
On Friday a workmate died. Its the second person whom I've worked with in two years to lose the fight with cancer. It reinforces the knowledge that I will only orbit the Sun a finite number of times and that my number is likely to be less than the average. Aside from all of the feeling crap and the implications that; it's a cold with lots of added features thanks to my altered body it introduces that period of doubt. That point when you know "I'm not sick by I'm not well". Being on the way down with lots of silly and generic symptoms. Difficulty sleeping, headaches, dizzyness. I don't for a moment think I'm terminally ill but I also remember that neither did these people.
The pessimism, worry and stress are all extremely tiring. The hurt and loss only make that worse too. Things will get better and I'm sure that at some point I'll be able to confidently fall asleep again. I just with I knew when that would be.
Maybe they were the thoughts I needed to get down somewhere.
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