“Sleep Deprivation is a Form of Torture”

Truer words were never spoken by one of my friends this week. A fellow veteran of my Frenemy Prednisolone, she knows wherefore she speaks.

I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in 5 ½ weeks. I’m averaging about 4 hours a night. If I’m lucky, I get 5 ½ hours. If I’m really unlucky, I get virtually none. If I go to bed during the day, I don’t sleep, no matter how tired I am.

My previous experiences with my Frenemy always came with insomnia, but as I only took it for short periods, it was manageable and I often ended up getting a lot of housework done. The problem now is that I’m too tired to do anything with the insomnia and just lie there, and my mind spins away on me, leaving me a ball of nerves, sometimes to the point of paranoia.

I’ve never been a good sleeper. It takes me ages to settle, I wake easily to any noise or light, and when I wake up in the middle of the night, I can’t get back to sleep. My Frenemy turns the volume up on this by eleven.

In my manic anxiety over the past week, I haven’t felt safe to drive, and some of my friends have been very kind and bailed me out when I needed to get somewhere. I even broke down and had my weekly grocery shop delivered last week (why hadn’t I done that before?!) so that I wouldn't have to drive to the supermarket (or wander the aisles looking at things I can't eat). Initially, I thought it was the anxiety and panic attacks that were taking me off the road. But now I’ve realised that that’s not the bigger picture. The reality is that I’m not safe to drive because I'm sleep deprived. And this lack of sleep isn't helping my body to heal either.

I’m hoping that I’ve hit a turning point on dealing with the mental health side of things this week. After totally melting down on Sunday, I have finally come to the painful realisation that I was allowing the anxiety to take over my life. Now I need to take control of it. I need to “put it in the box”, and sit on the lid if need be.

I need to force myself into the shower every day, do the washing up every day, make sure that I eat regularly, and leave the house every day, even if it is just to go as far as the postbox. When the anxiety completely tries to take over, I need to distract myself by doing something mindless, even if it's just cleaning the kitchen counter for the 80th time this week. And I need to do it no matter how much my mind is trying to play tricks on me. I need to win the battle on the mental health front before I can do battle with the Crohn's.

What’s frustrating is that in my “normal” state (such as that may be), this isn’t like me. I’m normally a fairly confident person who is adventurous with no fear of public speaking and who can be direct to the point of being a bit blunt (if not a bit of a bitch when needed). I have a good, if not at times, dark sense of humour, which has always helped me to work through adversity. Yes, I can be a worrier, but usually I can move on from my worries by venting joking talking about them. I have coached other people through dealing with anxiety and panic attacks, so why the hell can’t I take my own advice? I guess this one of the things that people refer to as a “personal growth moment”.