Bob Marley has a famous quote
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice“
It’s coming up 5 weeks until my crash/flare started. I didn’t leave the house (other than to walk out the back door and sit on the patio) for 16 days, and didn’t drive my car for 21 days.
Quite something for me, as I always have some small errand to run or somewhere to go. Appointments were cancelled and errands picked up by Andy & Peter.
I even changed a rare face to face GP appointment to a phone call - I can imagine the receptionists face as I said that I was too ill to go in person.
So for 2 weeks I did zilch, nada, nothing.
All the time thinking about what needed to be done. The temptation when you begin to improve is to just go back at life at 100%. However I knew that if I did so, I would soon become incapacitated again.
The mantra had to be “Proceed with caution “ do not under any circumstance do more than you have planned and take life very very slowly.
The family soon got the hang of it, yes Mum was up and dressed but definitely not firing on all cylinders, physically or mentally. They would be called upon to serve up dinner after I had managed to put it in the oven, or carry something downstairs.
My brain fog was in its element especially first and last thing , the malapropisms were hilarious, humour is so important when your brain thinks one thing and your mouth utters something different!!!
Even writing addresses for letters and parcels has been problematic I discovered weeks later as things don’t arrive ……
Pacing has been the subject of an earlier blog, but this has been the first time in very many years that I have had to be absolutely meticulous and methodical in my daily allocation of energy.
Made even more tricky by ongoing health issues with mine and Andy’s elderly parents. This probably being more of a psychological drain on energy than a physical one, but all the more important to the matter of pacing.
I was horrified when I discovered that Mum had had a fall and not told me until 3 days later when she could conceal it no longer, and had sworn certain people to secrecy. An absolute nightmare!!
Hard decisions have had to be made about certain plans and whether they could be kept or not attended. That’s so hard because my social life is not exactly packed when I am functioning at my “normal” level. People understand but it’s still frustrating.
Thankfully we have social media, and the technology to remain connected via various ways that don’t require physical presence.
So here I am at four and a half weeks, just beginning to plant up my pots with the bedding plants that I bought on the day I really should have read the signs and not gone plant shopping! Most of them have survived, they have been kept hydrated in some garden trays and whilst the slugs and snails have had an all you can eat buffet by our back door, they have been beautiful to look at in their temporary location.
For me, not having the energy or inclination to do stuff because I felt so ill, is not new. That it went on for a good 2 weeks was a big shock, and then a further surprise is that I am at this point still not back to being able to do as much as I could before the crash/flare.
And I am left asking myself, “when will normal service be resumed?”
Will I ever get back to that point?
I’m confident that I will, I just have to give it time.
