When I get extremely overwhelmed, I sleep. In addition to having Crohn’s Disease, I also suffer from pretty severe depression and anxiety. The mix of these means that, left on my own, I can usually sleep 12-14 hours a night uninterrupted. However, that number rises even higher when I’m overloaded with information that is upsetting. It’s like someone flips my off switch. As you read in Sleep Well, you’ll never get a great night’s sleep in the hospital. This is about as close as I ever came to achieving that.
The cyclosporine had given me the full-body shakes for about six weeks, but it had also raised my blood pressure and heart rate. If I remember correctly, at this point, my blood pressure was somewhere around 145/95 and my heart rate was somewhere around 90 beats/minute. It took a few hours to feel the effects of stopping the drug and it took a few days for my system to return to normal.
That all sounds horrible, right? Well, it was. But, this was keeping me from needing surgery and an ostomy. It was my favorite option at the time, but now it was gone. The reality of my situation overloaded me and I slept. With the shakes stopped, I actually slept well. At least there was that.