Fatigue

I missed my post yesterday

Because I crawled into bed as soon as I got home and was in and out of sleep starting at 7pm

My body shut down

My brain shut down

It’s still down

It happens

To me, to all of us, more than most admit

Five years ago when I was in the midst of the divorce and the investigation and dad’s cancer I went through a few weeks – not days, weeks – where I could not stay awake.

I would come home and sleep

Wake up make the kids dinner and sleep

Get up for the kids baths and bed time and sleep

Go to work and sneak off to nap in my boss’s office or my car

I thought I was severely depressed

And I was

But bloodwork showed I had mono

Mono!! What, how, uh?

Well it wasn’t active mono, it was a condition where the mono left in my cells from when I had it as a teenager reactivated and the fatigue set in.

The treatment – rest.

The cause of reactivation – stress.

And overworking and all that comes with it.

Other symptoms, swollen glands, body aches – overall feeling shitty.

Since then I’ve been diagnosed w Chronic Epstein Bar Syndrome.

Yeh, just fancy words for “you work yourself to the bone and your body says no more and shuts your shit down”.

Treatment – rest and no stress

Ha! I may can squeeze in the rest but the stress , yeh that’s just life’s permanent disease.

It actually hits more often than I admit.

If I was another person I’d go thru the whole FMLA process and get my accommodations and all that shit but I don’t — I’m just too tired to deal w all that.

Most times I power thru.

Big girl panties up. Coffee and sugar my way through.

Sometimes the body revolts and forces the rest.

Sometimes my common sense and pending schedule prevail and I take the rest knowing there’s more to come.

Either way, it’s a thing.

Another thing I manage.

And in the grand scheme of all things medical I could be dealing with, not a big deal.

And thus, it just is.

But what occurs to me is there is a societal condition, a universal female disease of work to the bone, work thru the bone.

Chronic fatigue- sure

Chronic stress – of course

Chronic guilt – yup!

Chronic debilitating mental load – humm

Chronic shittiness.

And I may explore some more of that later, how we women got here, how we can get out of here, how the current societal system is dysfunctional and ultimately infecting us all.

But right now, I’m just too damn tired.