I just celebrated my four-year “anniversary” of being diagnosed with IBD. (In all likelihood, I’ve had it for at least seven years, but I was misdiagnosed for a long time.) I could write about fifteen different entries on the various problems I’ve had with this disease, but today I’m focusing on one that’s been more of an issue lately. That issue is my dreams.
I don’t know that I would necessarily classify my dreams as nightmares. Nightmares, when I had them pre-IBD, never felt like this. They were always about tragedies befalling people I loved, or ridiculous things (like the summer before eighth grade, when I constantly dreamed about losing all of my teeth. Maybe that was some foreshadowing of my future IBD-related dental issues.)
The worst thing about these dreams is that they’re real. Not that they are actually occurring at that given moment, of course; I have no surprise when I wake up in my bed. But the people are real. I have been to those places. Situations are the same, or worse. The worst part is that I know that they are dreams. I know this has already happened, or could never happen that way. The people are gone. I can’t go to those places anymore. But my mind takes me there every night to remind me of what I have lost.
So it’s come to this point: the point where I hold off on sleep. The point where I research anything that will make my dreams go away entirely, as ridiculous as that may seem. Some would call this nothing, but this is only one of the many complications of IBD I struggle with, and it bleeds over into every other aspect of my life. I know that it will go away eventually, just like it did after my last flare. I know that it won’t always be this way.
But until then, I fight my own mind every night.