Wednesday, August 29, 2007
CFS Sucks
I thought for this post I'd quote an email I recently wrote to an old friend I have been out of touch with for about a decade. The email was to bring him up to date with my life since then, a major part of which has
obviously been my experience of
CFS. So I guess this is a potted history of that experience. This will be old news for some of you, but for others it might help to explain where I am at and why without the need to dredge through the old posts. To give you the background, prior to getting
CFS, I was working
full time in consulting, cycling
recreationally, taking dance classes once a week and generally being a very active and busy person. I have always been the kind to get every cold going around, but had never had a major health scare and led a pretty healthy life.
"
A bit over 2 years ago I had glandular fever, and despite resting lots, and generally looking after myself quite well at the time and in the aftermath, I ended up getting chronic fatigue syndrome. Which sucks. It sucked a lot more back then - for a long time I was only working 3 or 4 days a week, and I would come home and just lie on the couch
semi comatose from exhaustion, I had no social life (and my boyfriend had left me to go to Canada), couldn't exercise (it makes things worse, still), and generally it was a bit shit for a while. Then a friend got me into rowing, well coxing to be precise, which didn't require much energy and gave me a social and"sporting" life again. I got a little healthier that summer, I even thought maybe I had kicked the
CFS. I started cycling again and was returning to "normal". But last winter I got a lot worse again, which led to me deciding to get out of my job in consulting which wasn't helping in terms of workload and stress. Stress being a major factor in periodically
worsening my symptoms.
These days I lead a student life, and if I feel really bad in the morning I just sleep in and do some work from home. I have been so much healthier this year also, which I am beginning to think (hope) is an lasting improvement. Probably this is partly because I have been able to rest when I need, and probably it is also partly independent of the lifestyle change. I'm realising that studying is very hard work also, but it is easier for me to manage my workload (if I get organised), and I find it much more intellectually stimulating in many ways. I also have a great bunch of friends at uni now both in my department and also a few others who are old friends who are also studying.
I haven't returned to exercise yet. Earlier in the year I tried cycling (slowly) to uni a couple of times (about 3km each way). But each time it would precipitate a crash and my health would worsen. These days the best I do it so walk from the tram to uni and back on good days - that's probably about 3km in total, which I figure isn't too bad. I am hoping my
tolerance for this will gradually increase
and maybe someday I will be able to resume cycling and possibly even my dancing lessons, which I miss a lot.
Lots of people have told me that I also seem much happier this year. I don't think I was unhappy last year, but I
certainly had less energy to smile at people and there were times when I was sick that I was pretty down about it. But now - smiles all round.
"
Labels: CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, exercise, glandular fever, history, life before CFS, relapse, social life, study, work
Posted by Ellie at 12:02 PM
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Catching up on birthday celebrations
It was my birthday about a week ago. Last year I was quite sick during winter, so apart from dinner with my boyfriend, I didn't actually celebrate my birthday. I like birthdays, so that fact got me down a bit. This year I am physically (and according to my friends who keep telling me I'm much happier, emotionally too) much healthier, and boy am I making up for last year.
Firstly, my boyfriend took me out to a very nice restaurant and totally spoiled me on my actual birthday. Afterwards we got yummy hot chocolate on the way home... Mmmm.... Hot chocolate... :)
Then, I had a big (for me) night out with friends last friday. Unlike most of the time when I organise parties, people actually turned up. Lots of people, so many so that we managed to take up the whol upstairs in the bar I chose. It was lovely to be surrounded by friends, some of whom I hadn't seen for about 6 months, or more!
And next weekend, I will be back in my old hometown, visiting my parents and friends there. I'm having more birthday celebrations, including having friends over on the Saturday night. Hopefully with a bit more luck people will actually turn up again, and it will be a lovely night.
In between celebrating my birthday on three separate occasions, I have been busy with field work for my PhD (very physically demanding). I feel like I've been overdoing it, except I don't - I just feel kinda normal tired, not CFS tired. A nice change.
Anyway, just wanted to share with you all the pleasure of being able to lead something of a normal life for a little while and make up for some of the lost time of last winter.
Labels: birthday, CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, friends
Posted by Ellie at 8:59 PM
