I know that my next post should have been ‘Water Water – Part 2’ (and I am getting around to it – a fractured tooth and an unexplained additional food sensitivity are hampering my general productivity) but on this Fibromyalgia Awareness Day I wanted to say a little something about the dreaded, and oft-misunderstood F word – fatigue.
The fatigue that comes with chronic illness is so much more than just feeling tired or sleep deprived.
It’s not merely feeling as though your muscles have been pumped full of concrete; it is every single autonomic system fighting for survival. Brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, intestines – every single thing running on empty and only performing (often quite poorly) the very minimum of its job to keep the body alive.
That’s why having a ‘little rest’, ‘pacing’ or getting a ‘good night’s sleep’ do so little to alleviate the symptoms – it literally feels like the body has been poisoned, and ‘having a nap’ has never been any kind of antidote for a stomach full of arsenic.
