Tag: Fatigue

August Gratitude

Published on by Bubbles in the BrainLeave a comment

August has slipped away and we are finally into spring! Before I can celebrate the joyous arrival of that lovely season, though, I want to talk about what I was grateful for in the final month of winter.

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to do this.  I ended August on a bad note, with a solid two weeks of pain that eventually got so horrific I was forced to take a week off.  It’s always super depressing that happens, because you start questioning the effectiveness of your treatment and eventually spiral down into deciding that nothing will fix you and you are doomed to be eaten alive by your own uterus.  It’s hard to be grateful in those circumstances and it has made this list a little harder to complete.

Nevertheless, grateful I am and grateful I will continue to be.  Here’s what about.

1) Having a warm home

I used to volunteer in a men’s homeless shelter overnight in winter. You’d sleep on the ground in the church hall we were given for it, inside a sleeping bag. Even with my cosy sleeping bag, it was chilly. Of course, I only had to do that one or two nights a month. For the men that utilised the shelter, they had to sleep in those conditions or worse every night.

Burning Firewoods
Image description: a wood fire burning in a brick fireplace.  

Australia can get cold at night. Really cold. Dying of exposure is a possibility. Each winter I am grateful for four walls and a roof, a warm bed and fluffy pyjamas.  I am glad that my pets are also safe and warm around me.

2) Wonderful work friends

As I noted in July, our team grew again, and I’m delighted that our new additions are, like my existing colleagues, smart, capable, hard-working, kind, hilarious women that I can have a good laugh with even whilst we are working under heavy pressure to produce good stuff. With or without these ladies, my work would be interesting, but they make it delightful. People really do make a workplace.

3) New suit

It’s red. It’s fabulous. It was on sale. Enough said.

Image result for review australia aries jacket
Image description: a blonde white woman wears a black dress with flowers printed on it and a dark red blazer with a waterfall front.  This is the jacket from my new suit.  Image and jacket from Review Australia.  

4) Blue skies

You know those windless winter days where the air is still crisp and cold but the sun is beautifully warm and the sky is a perfect rich blue without a cloud in sight? Australia does those days well. I love them, and the end of August gave me plenty of them.

5) Gorgeous sunsets

The sunsets really started to get pretty in August. They’d be gold at the horizon, fading up through pink, into violet, through all the shades of blue. The city skyline and the hills around were silhouettes perfectly against it. It was all just super pretty.

6) Two straight weeks of work

Sure, I ended August with a horrific flare-up and the two weeks leading up to them involved a fair amount of pain, but I managed them at work and I achieved good stuff.

7) Age of Empires

Image result for age of empires
Image description: computer graphics showing some short wooden towers and walls on either side of a path.  There are trees and cliffs to their right.  Further to the right is a stone house and a stone tower, looking over the coast line.  In the very blue sea is a dock and three little ships.  The text across the picture reads, “Age of Empires II: HD Edition.”  

 

I got my first copy of AoE in a box of Nutrigrain. It was great. My sister and I soon acquired Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. We were thrilled when Age of Empires III came out. It’s fun, it’s pretty, you get to fight the French. I went on a bit of a binge during August and enjoyed not only the game, but the nostalgia too.  There are many different nations to play as and against, each with their own distinct characteristics and style.  Also exciting: apparently there is going to be an Age of Empires 4 released next year.

8) B12 spray

Image description: a white spray bottle with a blue label that reads: B12 Liquid.  

I take a LOT of vitamins. Between the IBS and the endo and the various deficiencies, I have to swallow a lot of tablets. Not only is a sublingual spray a more efficient way of absorbing B12 (particularly important for vegans), it’s relatively tasty and it is one less pill to have to force down your throat.  It’s actually a big relief for me to find a way to take this important supplement without having to fight nausea to do it.  I use this bad boy: https://www.discountepharmacy.com.au/bioceuticals-b12-spray/

9) Tofu

Maybe it sounds like a silly thing to be grateful for, but I really am.  It’s such a versatile and delicious food.  It’s really quick to cook and it doesn’t cause me digestive issues.  It’s very nutritious, with plenty of protein and surprising amount of iron for a such a pale, flabby-looking food (I always associate iron with dark colours like kale or spinach).  I particularly like it as a scramble (crumbled into a frying pan with oil and whatever herbs, spices and vegetables I fancy) or fried in a coating of salt, pepper and flour.  Yum.

10) My parents

Once again, my parents helped me out during my week of sickness.  My mum came out twice, brought me some groceries and did some of my laundry, and my dad came out once, drank my tea and then had to leave because he’s allergic to my cat.  Having help with the chores went you can’t stand is just the biggest weight off your mind – not only does a cleaner space make my mental health better, it relieves the pressure on me and on my husband, who of course otherwise has to pick up the slack when I’m sick.  Even just having company makes a big difference – being home sick is a lonely, isolating experience.  You feel a bit unloved and a bit useless.  Company helps relieve that.

 

What were you grateful for in August?  Anything amazing happen?  Did you have to struggle to find the silver lining in the clouds?  Let me know in the comments.

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Fighting Fatigue

Published on by Bubbles in the BrainLeave a comment

Sometimes I think the single worst enemy of the chronically ill, aside from the actual illness, is fatigue.  It’s pervasive.  It’s debilitating.  It lingers, and it won’t go.  It lowers your immune system, makes you more susceptible to pain, slows your thought process and just makes it nigh-on impossible to exist like a normal human being.  

It’s particularly bad when you start your week exhausted.  Those who read my last post will know that I was up until around 4am on Sunday night (well, Monday morning by that time) accidentally tripping my face off on tramadol.  Do not recommend.  The net result, for a girl whose alarm goes off shortly after 6am, was very little sleep.  I went in late to work so I could catch up on some extra rest (and wait for the horrific weakness and shaking to pass), but it wasn’t enough.  

The other thing about fatigue is that it is cumulative.  Each day of legal work, no matter how exciting, is tiring.  Your brain is doing a million things, you never have enough time to finish all the things you’d like to, and if you work in litigation, you are probably on the go between courtrooms, offices and the local corner shop for chocolate several times a day.  My spoons, never high at the best of time, were seriously depleted by Sunday night; each day took away a little more.  On Friday, I had literally none left.  I woke up so exhausted I could barely move.  The toilet door, all of two feet from my bed, seemed like a million miles.  Moving my arms to my phone to email work took everything I had.

This may seem like a lazy millennial exaggeration (not a stereotype I appreciate, by the way).  “Ugh, I’m soooo tired.”  Other spoonies know.  It’s exhaustion beyond the point of comprehension.  Literally, I was so tired I couldn’t understand it.  You feel pressed down by a physical weight.  It’s not like you’re underwater, it’s like you’re under mud.  Thick, quagmire, sucking-you-down type mud.  

Of course, because I was tired, I had no reserves to deal with the post-op pain.  Whether it was objectively worse than usual or I simply felt it to be worse, I’m not sure (although it felt pretty bad).  I also had a blocked nose, with a headache and sinus pain and a croaky throat.  Thankfully they have mostly passed.  I was convinced I was getting another interminable cold.  In any case, there was only one possible solution for this kind of exhaustion – to go back to sleep.

That’s the big problem with trying to fight fatigue.  You might be able to stave off the sleep debt for a few days, snatching extra hours where you can and chugging caffeinated beverages where you can’t.  Ultimately, though, it will always build to the point where it becomes so big a monster that you can’t fight it off any more and it simply overwhelms you.  I’m disappointed it got me on Friday, and that I couldn’t hold out one more day, but that’s the reality of chronic illness – you can’t always go the distance and you always have to pay the price for trying to.