A New Year, A New Me?

I am such a sucker for New Year's.  Not for the all-night drunk-a-thon, or Dick Clark and Times Square.  I'm a sucker for wiping the slate clean, setting resolutions, sweeping out the old and welcoming the new.  I get all excited about making promises to cook healthfully, to throw out all the stuff cluttering up my house and my life, to learn new skills, to organize my music catalog.....blah, blah, blah.  We can be anyone we want, do anything we want, we simply must resolve to do it!  It's so hopeful to feel like anything is within our reach and that we are all masters of our own destinies.

So this being my own little season of hope, it's somewhat fitting that I'll undertake my helminthic journey just as a new year begins.  But I'm also keenly aware of the fact that the complete lack of control--of my bowels, of my time, of my life!--is what makes having UC so hard.

The feelings I am having right now about all this are so familiar.  I'm so hopeful that THIS TIME things are going to be different.  This time, I'm going to feel better, get stronger, and leave my meds behind.  I'm trying to remember that maybe it won't work, that maybe nothing will change for me, but the other side of that coin is that maybe EVERYTHING will change for me! 

The realistic (maybe a little optimistic) hope is that my treatment will help me quit a couple of my meds and maybe reduce the others.  That it will make mornings a little more predictable.  And that I can stop carrying around my emergency kit of clean undies and baby wipes.

But if EVERYTHING changes, maybe I can run a few races this summer.  Maybe I can actually plan on exercising in the mornings.  Maybe I can be med-free.  Oh my God, I haven't been med-free since 1997.  The closest I've been is, I think, 9 pills a day.  I'm getting jittery and excited right now just thinking about it.



My ultimate hope for the new year is that I do in fact reach a full remission.  But barring that, my hope is that, at least for 2011, I can find peace no matter where I'm at, health-wise.  Because sometimes it's the struggle and the searching that wear me down the most.  So even if I can't get better with my friends the whipworms, maybe I can at least accept the things I cannot change.  For a little while. 

Hmmmm.  That sounds like a reasonable strategy, but when the rubber hits the road, I'm probably way too Type A for that kind of Zen.  But it's New Year's!  A time when all things are possible, changes can be made, we can become whatever we want--all we need is resolve!

Happy New Year, everyone!