Fatigue

Today I hit a wall. I could tell it was coming. Every morning, waking with the aching; every afternoon, needing to lie down to rest.

I thought I had chronic fatigue beaten with the hypothyroidism diagnosis and successful treatment. And believe me, what I'm experiencing today is nothing like it was before. I used to wake up in the morning and feel completely unrested. I slogged through my days for years with grinding, bone-numbing fatigue.

This isn't that, but it's still so discouraging.

I simply don't have the physical ability to get done what needs to be done - in my house, in my yard, with my kids.

Since February, I have been working hard to make sure I exercise daily. I have increased my walking to 2 miles nearly every day of the week and have just started adding a third mile a couple of times a week.

Feeling this fatigued scares me; I don't want to go back to how I was before. I can't risk getting depressed and losing all the exericse progress I've made.

But right now, my muscles ache and my limbs are heavy. Just thinking about the effort it's going to take to go to the kitchen and get supper started is exhausting.

I feel so guilty that my husband comes home from his 10-hour-plus days, only to have to work another 2-3 here at home because I can't get things done.

There's a commercial on tv right now - I think it might be for fibromyalgia - in which the voice over says "if I looked sick, then would people believe me?"

I still haven't accepted that I'm not going to spring back to my old activity levels.

I'm really not just lazy.

I'm just tired.

Oh, so tired.