Ah, another comic about prednisone. As I mentioned last time, a person shouldn’t be on prednisone for longer than 3 months. At this point, I’d been on it for about 4 months and it was really starting to do quite a number on me. My health was declining rapidly and I still couldn’t sleep. This meant that my body and mind were both starting to deteriorate. I was starting to get scared.
As a reminder, “The Crohn’s Saga” is an ongoing story that is intended to be read as a continuing arc. That’s why each of these entries is numbered. The flare that it chronicles began in the fall of 2015 and started to get nasty around April of 2016. At this point in the story, we are in September 2016. I want to clarify this because things in this story are about to get bad. I’m writing this in April 2017, so you know I’ll survive at least this long, but I am still sick.
“The Crohn’s Saga” came about as my way of coping with this flare. Watching my health fail while struggling to maintain my relationship and career was a lot for me to deal with. I’d tried journaling as a method of stress relief in the past, but I always tended to get wordy and dark. So, instead of journaling, I started drawing these little comics about what was going on. Every time something happened that felt like too much, I would draw it out. This helped me deal with my feelings, but it also forced me to find the humor in the situation.
After a few months, I started showing a few to my family and friends. They found them very helpful in understanding the daily realities of Crohn’s during a flare. I built all of this and I continue to post in the hopes that it will help others. In reading these, I hope that people with Crohn’s will feel like they aren’t so alone. I also hope that friends and families of those with the disease will walk away with a better understanding.
The other posts and categories exist because they make me laugh. It can’t all be about Crohn’s all the time. I hope you’re enjoying them too.