Three days in a row now, I have managed to eat breakfast short of possibly two mouthfuls, the kind of level I would have kept my kids sitting there until it was all eaten, but I just can’t eat it. I feel so sick at even the thought, as I have just forced myself to eat the second half of the bowl, one more mouthful and I know I will be sick. I am quite seriously thinking about giving up breakfast, as feeling sick every morning is something I could do without, lunch isn’t half so bad, probably as it is cold and I can eat it slowly without fearing it will become totally unpalatable. Morning is becoming a harder and harder time of day to deal with, not only can I no longer remember the last time I woke feeling anything near ready to be up and about, I spend most of it feeling sick and lately with growing chest pain. All too often on top of that, thanks to the time of year, I spend those first hours also so cold that I am wrapped up in clothes and my blanket, well sleeping bag, but it’s now become too dangerous for me to use it in that way. I have nearly fallen far too many times trying to step in and out of it, that I darn’t do up the zip any longer, it may not be quite so effective but it’s safe.
I am more and more finding the mornings the toughest part of the day to deal with, the day always seems to improve around mid day, I may still feel tired then, but the house temperature always seems to improve just a bit and the nausea settles along with it. I can’t see how to change it, I don’t believe that more sleep could really make much difference and anyway, as if 11 hours straight finds me just as tired as I was when I went to bed, why would another hour or so change it. Short of getting up to take my meds, then going back to bed, for another few hours, I don’t understand where the space to sleep still remains, even my afternoon nap no longer makes a difference and I long to sleep as much after it as I do in the morning. Tired seems to be a state of life, not something to be improved on, just the way my world now is, regardless of any other factors. It doesn’t matter how much I try to remember, nothing seems to come to me as an answer, I quite honestly haven’t the slightest idea when I last didn’t feel tired. It has become the one thing that I have almost given up saying, I’m tired, so what, I am always tired and nothing changes it in any way. I never understood just how debilitating it could be just to feel as though you haven’t slept for years, as that is how it feels, as thought I haven’t really rested, really found any refreshment or improved anything by sleeping. For years I have just got on with it, accepted it as much as I accept the pain, but they don’t work separately, they work hand in hand as the worse the tiredness, the worse the pain and the worse the pain, the more tired I get. It’s why pain control is so important to me, if you are awake and with it, all pain is bearable, not nice, but bearable. You can’t sleep without the pain being under control, well not for long and not properly, I swear I seldom wake because of it, yet I also swear that I don’t sleep as deeply as I might if there was no pain. Pain alone doesn’t kill, but tiredness can. Tiredness causes accidents, more falls, more irritation and more pain, more frustration and inability to cope with life, more cuts, more bruises, more everything that’s negative. More and more I find myself sitting with my eyes shut, trying to find just a seconds rest, so that I can have another second awake and active, it’s a battle that none of us can truly win, especially when sleep seems to make no change at all. Life feels as though it is lived in a twilight zone, as this isn’t the purest meaning of life, this is somewhere off to the side of life, it’s existence with bright spot, still moving forward, but with lead weights constantly dragging downwards and backwards.
Fatigue sits heavily on every muscle, limbs drag in their actions, holding on in a hope that they might be allowed to stop and to rest if they drag deeply and heavily enough. Rest, just a few second, the chance to restore, rejuvenate, to be what they once were, but always screaming to be allowed to stop, stop for just a few more hours. Even the smallest muscles, the ones we forget exist, complain, eyes don’t seem to focus, I know the world isn’t a blurred mess, there was once definition out there, things used to be sharp, clear and precise. Glasses don’t help, they pinch my nose, their arms add unwanted pressure and causing the skin under them on my ears to itch, as they weigh down on the skin that doesn’t want them either. Even hearing changes, just as the rest of you fluxes through the days, the weeks, months and years. As that fatigue grows it drains you, every action takes more energy than if those muscles just worked as normal, fatigue isn’t just a sluggish action combined with aches and pains, fatigue is in itself a leach that sucks the very life out of your body. That energy well that hasn’t been full for years, lowers with every action we make, but those actions are now laboured, they take longer and drain even more of that personal energy that you don’t have to spare.
Nothing ever stays the same, everything slides slowly further and further away from their starting point and all you want to do is sleep, just one more hour, maybe a couple, who knows how long if you just didn’t set that alarm, would I sleep a whole day or longer, or just an hour before getting up even more tired than when I used up the precious energy to just get into my bed. Tired is a constant dripping tap, there in the back ground through every bright conversation, underneath every joke, each smile and even typed word, supporting ever action and in every fibre that knows how to let you know, just how it feels. It isn’t as simple as rest, yes you might stop, you might even lie down and close your eyes, but that doesn’t end the spasms, the pain and the constant shifting inside continues. Every muscle contraction takes energy, eaten away for no purpose other than to cause more pain, pain that stops you from really resting. Every spasm or pain has a reaction, you shift to release it, twist to escape it, massage and press into, searching for the trigger that will break it and give you some peace, on it’s own it has used up energy, then you use even more just to stop it. One small spasm uses your energy, that precious energy you had planned for later use, it isn’t just stealing your life force, as they day goes on, together they are stealing your very life. There is no escape, no answers, no way of turning the clock back and regaining what is now long gone, life has moved into a semi zombie state, you have no choice. If each day is going to have those vital elements, the points in them that make it all worth well, you have to learn how to manage the unmanageable. To adjust plans and even thoughts, as thought find you wondering off, to do what ever your unruly brain has come up with, because that is always the final result, you loose control of clear and logical thought, tiredness eats that as well. Concentration, memory, thought, logic, speech, swallowing, coordination, dexterity, nausea and even your safety, all in danger daily, just because you are tired beyond anything you thought possible and that is just when you wake up.
How am I?, “I’m OK, just tired”
Read my blog from 2 years ago today – 16/12/12 – Racing time
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 