Semi-good news....

So, last week, Wednesday, wasn't that bad. So I rested. Thursday was good too! Friday was even better.

So, that was all good news.

Saturday was bad, and Sunday wasn't much better. Monday was bearable, but, I did a bit over 20 minutes of walking to get lunch, and had a glass of wine before bed, and today I feel pretty good, and hope to have a decent day at work. So light exercise is not beyond me, and small quantities of alcohol don't seem to impair my recovery.

So, what happened Friday night to make everything go south on Saturday and Sunday? Well, that's the bad news, which I'm not willing to go into just yet. Suffice to say, I'm nowhere near ready to start acting like a normal person yet.

There are people to whom I owe communication, and I hope to get to that soon.

Sending out reminders to you all - you are loved, deeply, dearly, and deservedly.

Definite good news....

Okay. So, Friday night wiped me out. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were unpleasant. Well... Saturday and Sunday were occupied by TV marathons and computer gaming, which hardly counts as unpleasant. But I was aware that I was work resistant. Going out on Sunday morning to *go to the drug store* and pick up some vegetables at the store in the same plaza counted as a major victory.

So, the weekend was unpleasantly-symptom bound. And Monday was one of those days where I just had the hardest damn time making myself work.

Side note: do you know that learning you have chronic fatigue can be glorious in some ways? I hated days like Monday, I took extra Ritalin, I cussed at myself, I berated myself, and thought I was ten different kinds of worthless. But now I know that I'm fatigued. I've never been afraid of hard work that was necessary (ask people for stories of me helping out in moving parties) or when I was ready for it. But I couldn't square that with endlessly checking e-mail and websites when I'm at work and know damn well I need to do X or Y. And now I can.

I also realize that this is an important clue. If you know you *can* work hard when you need to, but you find yourself balking at work that you know should be relatively easy - that probably means something is wrong.

I don't mean if you think "just ten more minutes of my computer game - oh, now I can't do dishes, I have to get ready for work!" But if you look at the dishes and feel like crying - something's wrong.

(Time to make a joke about post-Thanksgiving dishes - but come on, you know what I mean!)

Anyway. Today was okay. Not, you know, *great*, but definitely okay. I got stuff done. It took longer than it should have, but it got done. And now I'm about to do just a tiny bit of busywork at home, because I'd rather not have to do it tomorrow, even though I feel reasonably confident that I could.

This is definitely good news because it shows that rest does restore me. Whatever I have, it's a reaction to stress to my body, and avoiding stressing my body helps me heal. I'm just surprisingly brittle, so it doesn't take a lot of stress to fatigue me.

So, maybe I'll never be able to do more than a relatively small quantity of walking - I won't be able to run or go on long bicycle rides or whatever. And yeah, that sucks if it ends up being the case. But you know, I know people who can't even walk a hundred yards; I'm not going to despair because I might be "only" able to walk a mile or two.

(I might grieve - it would well and truly suck ass-flavored rocks through a bendy-straw. But not despair.)