I made a decision earlier in the week to try and offer some help at work. I know they’re struggling with workload and me being off isn’t helping but they’ve never made me feel guilty. In fact the opposite, “forget about work, concentrate on yourself” has always been the message. The last week or so has had me feeling a bit like a spare part, not doing anything other than get in the way.
So yesterday was the day. I was reminded again I’m still off sick so they’re not expecting a lot from me but were happy I wanted to try and keep busy.
I managed about an hour of work in the morning. My concentration was all over the place and the task I completed should have only taken 20 minutes. But it was a start. A break for lunch and a brief rest and I managed another hour in the afternoon. Again significantly slower than normal and at the end of it I could already feel myself flagging. When I say work, I mean sit at a computer, tapping keys, managing cloud computing resources. Hardly manual labour!
I was using my brain for the first time in months and it was tiring. I never knew how tiring it would be and it took me by surprise. However I marked it as a success.
Until this morning.
I woke up as usual at about 7.15am with Katie but immediately fell back to sleep until almost 11am. I was still tired, more tired than I’d been for weeks. A deep sapping of energy when moving and getting out of bed was an effort. I stayed in bed, watched a bit of TV until about 3pm then fell asleep again! This time until 7pm! I didn’t move at all in those 4 hours!
I had a call over lunch with an occupational therapist from Phyllis Tuckwell to specifically talk about managing fatigue and one thing she said resonated with me. True fatigue is not cured by sleep. It has to be managed and controlled. Something I clearly have a lot to still learn about. Luckily she emailed me a lot of information to help.
I was falling asleep again at 9.30pm and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open as I write this.
Now I’m not sure if this excessive tiredness today is down to using my brain for a few hours yesterday or not. I can’t believe it is but I’ve never been one to believe in coincidences either. It’s worrying though.
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