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Why is pacing so gosh darn difficult?
If you didn’t know, pacing is the single, most important way of managing your symptoms when you have a chronic illness like Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. It involves spreading high-energy activities over a long period of time, to stop your body over-exerting and inducing those horrible, energy limiting symptoms. ‘High energy’ is defined differently from person to person, depending on the severity of their condition. For me it is anything that involves standing up, but for someone with a more severe condition this could be as small as processing daylight. It takes a lot of planning, and a lot of practice, to be really efficient at it. However I do know people…
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Post Exertional Malaise and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS)
Post Exertional Malaise (or PEM) is one of the most common symptoms of many chronic illnesses, and is one of the defining symptoms of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS). This very limiting symptom is something that likes to rear its ugly head even when you think you’ve been so careful. And can come in many forms – sometimes I don’t even realise it’s what I am experiencing until my husband reminds me I have overdone it and what I am experiencing is the result of that. The dreaded PEM. As it’s such an important part of my life with ME/CFS, I thought it was high time I shared a bit more about…
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Living with a chronic illness is not ‘fun’
The title of this blog post may seem pretty obvious. You may have read it and thought ‘of course living with a chronic illness isn’t fun’, but its not the obvious I am going to talk about today. I often hear things like ‘at least you get to have a lot of sleep’ or ‘you get to spend a lot of time in bed’, as if these are things to be grateful for, or as if they are perks of my illness. And I know I am not alone in that. Comments like that arent meant to be offensive or insensitive. Often they are from people trying to support you,…
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A day in the life of anxiety
Before I get into this I feel I should give a slight trigger warning. If you’re anything like me, reading about anxiety triggers can actually trigger your own anxiety. While I don’t discuss anything particularly bad in this post I do advise to proceed with caution if that does apply to you! Right, let’s get to it then… You open your eyelids to a haze of what now’s and what ifs. Your stomach sinking further and further into the mattress, clawing and clinging, yearning to just go back to sleep. Have you ever experienced something that intense and immovable? It’s what every day can be like when you have anxiety.…
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Brain fog made me do it
Brain fog is a very common symptom of any chronic illness, the fogginess of the mind clouding memory and cognitive functioning. It can make even the most clever individual feel rather silly, and it can make doing anything difficult. So, in an effort to explain what brain fog feels like, and to try and laugh at some of the things I have done, I have decided to reveal all in this post. All the things I’ve done as a result of brain fog. It is something that I’ve been struggling with a lot recently. My current job is great as it is not physically demanding, but it does drain my…
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Myalgic Encephalomyelitis symptoms that aren’t as well known
I was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) nearly 10 years ago and there are still symptoms that arise that aren’t expected to this day. Each day is a learning curve with new and wonderful things to deal with (sense the sarcasm). It’s more than just all encompassing fatigue – in fact this causes many problems of its own. That is why it can be such a destructive disorder, particularly for those on the severe end of the spectrum. Keep reading to explore some of the more unusual and unexpected symptoms of myalgic encephalomyelitis – and let me know in the comments which one was the most surprising! Please note this…
