Friday, March 05, 2010

Why I am feeling miserable

After that headline, I know that if you're reading this, you really must care, so thank you!

This week has been pretty hellish. Every single thing I read, or hear from other people, about this post viral fatigue thingy I have had since I had Glandular Fever last year tells me not to push myself too hard, and in fact that makes it worse. Well, every so often I feel the need to test this theory, just to prove it right.

The trouble is that my state of health isn't compatible with a looming general election. Every cell of my psyche, made from DNA that says elections are times for relentless work, little sleep and absolutely nothing else is trying to kick start my body into action. It's kind of like a starter motor constantly going when there's not very much petrol, and the little there is has been contaminated with fairy liquid.

It's not so much the crushing fatigue, although that's not what you would call pleasant, but the major failures in concentration which gives me the attention span of a goldfish after several pints of beer, memory issues which mean I can remember a work case that happened 3 years ago but not what I went to the filing cabinet to get 3 seconds ago and a kind of scary failure at times to get words from my brain to my mouth. All of the above, I concede, has comedy value, but this week I haven't been laughing.

The election is going to have to be about the art of the possible. The people who are expecting me to do stuff are going to have to realise that they'll get everything I can possibly give them, and the people who want me to slow down are going to have to realise that there's no way on earth I'm going to make my health any worse. And if that realisation process can happen without any shouting, well, that would be good.

This conclusion I reached after a few weeks of really trying to push myself, periodically ending up in a heap, taking a couple of days to recover and having another go. The end result of that is that the boundaries seem to have shrunk back a bit.

Most of the time I've managed to stay in reasonably good spirits, but I've been as miserable as sin this week. I had laid some careful plans to go to Party Conference in Perth which fell apart on me at the beginning of this week. The idea was that we'd go, and I could just go and rest when I needed to and I'd get to see my friends and all sorts of exciting things, all of which would cheer me up. Now,the plans are that I'll get to go on Sunday morning, for the last 3 hours, when my friends will be so hungover that they won't care if I'm there or not. There is, however, a silver lining to that particular cloud which I can't tell you about just now, but watch this space at the beginning of the week.

In the global scheme of things, I know I really don't have much to complain about and I know that others have much more challenging and horrible and life threatening health conditions to deal with. I've just had a tough few days and am letting off a wee bit of steam on you. I hope you don't mind.

3 comments:

MekQuarrie said...

Get well soon Caron. :-)

lizw said...

Sorry to hear about this, Caron. I developed post-viral syndrome in 1994 after a bout of gastric flu - after the diagnosis I had three months of complete bedrest, which was a huge turning-point, and then another three months off work and six months of working part-time, but since then I've been able to work normally and do all the extra-curricular activities I did before, plus some new ones! I still need to pace myself a bit, but with a bit of planning it doesn't stop me doing anything I want to do - several people have told me I'm one of the busiest people they know. So I can say that it really can get better, but rest does seem to be the key, difficult though it is for people like us who like to be busy! I hope you can find the right balance as the election approaches.

BellgroveBelle said...

That sounds lousy, hope you're feeling better soon. x

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