As Awareness Week comes to a close today, I wanted to share my previous efforts for awareness week back in 2018 and some reminders for how I personally go about trying to focus on letting my IBD not rule my everyday life. While at times it does become more prominent, I do try and get some distance from it. IBD might be a large part of life, it is only…
ibd awareness week
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Awareness Week – Change in Perspective & Outlook
Part of #crohnsandcolitisawarenessweek How I think about myself and the life I want to live has changed since having IBD. I’d never really been sick before I was diagnosed with IBD. So the first thing I contended with was how what I thought my life was going to be like, changed. It wasn’t an overnight thing but gradually as I got better after being so unwell, there was a certain…
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Awareness Week – Changes in Mental Health
Part of #crohnsandcolitisawarenessweek My mental health has been really impacted by having Crohn’s disease. It started with the aftermath of diagnosis and has come back stronger and deeper since surgery. All of the issues that I’ve had have made it harder to process just how much IBD can go on to affect daily life, especially when you’re living in constant pain. Before stoma surgery, however, I was not taking medication…
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Awareness Week – Change in Bowel Habits
Part of #crohnsandcolitisawarenessweek My bowel habits began changing alot time before I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. In fact, I recently found a diary of mine from mid-2010 – a whole year prior to my diagnosis – in which I complained about some rather persistent diarrhoea. But I was studying for my final year exams, preparing for graduation and I thought it was stress-related. I certainly continued to think that…
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Awareness Week – Change in Appearance
Part of #crohnsandcolitisawarenessweek My appearance is something that changes quite often with my Crohns disease. Whether it be weight gain – either much needed or just subsequent – or weight loss, my body has not looked consistently the same for years. Even within a year, I can dramatically lose weight or gain it, it depends on how well my disease is being controlled my current course of treatment. While my…
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Crohns & Colitis Awareness Week – December 7th: Not All Superheroes Wear Capes
Part of the week of daily blogs for #crohnsandcolitisawarenessweek Read the entire week here. “I’m thankful for my struggle because without it I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength” Somewhat of a cliche now, but it’s a cliche because it’s true. I was diagnosed at 23 when I knew nothing about anything. Sure, I had graduated university, lived away from home, lived in a foreign country; but I knew nothing…
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Crohns & Colitis Awareness Week – December 6th: Surgery – Treatment Option or Last Resort?
Part of the week of daily blogs for #crohnsandcolitisawarenessweek Read the entire week here. I went through all medical options before I turned to surgery to help my IBD. Some days I wonder if I left it too long or was it just right? Some days I wonder what would have happened if I had gone for the clinical trial instead of the resection. But then I remember the life…
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Crohns & Colitis Awareness Week – December 5th: Misconceptions
Part of the week of daily blogs for #crohnsandcolitisawarenessweek Read the entire week here. “When they said chronic I didn’t think. They meant every single damn day.” Chronic and invisible. Double whammy. Despite there being so much information out there about the basics of IBD, we as patients still experience misconceptions and misinformation throughout our patient journey. For some this can be the fact that at a primary level, IBD…
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Crohns & Colitis Awareness Week – December 4th: Fatigue
Part of the week of daily blogs for #crohnsandcolitisawarenessweek Read the entire week here. For most, tiredness comes when you’re overdoing it – working too many hours, being social, finding things to do instead of sleep. But when you have a chronic illness, the fatigue is a next level of tiredness. I find myself stopping from saying ‘I’m tired’ because this invites so many people to say the same back…