Like clockwork? (Re)imagining rhythms and routines when living with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)

Temporal trajectories of health, illness, and disability - from biographical change to micro embodied practices within social time - are important strands within medical sociology and disability studies. Drawing upon a UK based qualitative study using diaries and follow-up interviews to explore everyday life with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), this paper explores routines when living with the condition. It focuses specifically on accounts of routines being anticipated, slowed down and stretched out to accommodate and/or care for bodies, with personal and social rhythms weaved in, out, and with each other. Such reflections are told through participants' accounts of knowing routines and rhythms, stretching out and pacing morning routines to care for the body and how everyday practices are reimagined as the body and the social meet. Drawing upon the concept of ‘Crip Time’ where the social bends to meet with the body, this paper seeks to illuminate important intersections between medical sociology and disability studies through accounts of living with IBS. This paper demonstrates the entanglement of structural, disabling temporal rhythms and embodied temporalities, through an acknowledgement of routines reimagined. It offers a contribution to both medical sociology and disability studies in reimagining social lives with embodied temporalities in mind.