Speaking of Fatigue

Fatigue is a really ugly word. I didn’t think a lot of it until I actually experienced it. Sure, I’d been tired a lot in my life and was even prone to saying, ‘I’m tired’, just because I wanted to take a break from whatever chore I might be doing to smoke a cigarette. I’d been tired after a really hard day of physical labor like painting or gardening. But ‘tired’ is NOT fatigue. Fatigue is like a monster that crawls into your body, sucks the life blood out of you, and leaves you the ability to focus just enough so that you realize you are not YOU. Fatigue leaves you with no desire to function, and if you must function, you feel like the last drop of molasses at the bottom of the bottle.

It hit me in the summer of ’06. Right in the midst of lake season: beer, pontoon, sunshine, good times every weekend. Now, I had noticed that about once a month, I would have a day that would leave me drained for no reason. But suddenly, it was 2 or even 3 days at a time. I would take a nap at lunch and still be wiped out. Several times I simply didn’t return to work, calling the boss on the old cell phone and bugging out. I would come home and do NOTHING. NOTHING what so ever. Just go to my room, shut the door, and explain to my husband that the monster had attacked. ‘Please be patient,” was my plea. And he did try.

Doctors? Yes, I’ve been through several - and am still on the hunt for one who actually looks for the root of the problem instead of focusing on symptoms. Will visit a new one next month. The best I can say for medical professionals is they are human, too. And they obsess about cholesterol. They may not know what’s wrong with you, but they believe if they fix the cholesterol, everything else will fall into place.

Anyhow, I have come to terms with it. The fatigue that is. I was blessed enough to be able to quit my job for a time, and am now able to rest whenever the monster strikes. Thanks be to God, that does not seem to be as often now. And as there are blessings even in adversity, fatigue is partly what led to ‘the corner.’ But more on that later. Let’s just say these days I do my best not to say ‘I’m tired’ unless it is truly the case. We don’t want to speak things in to existence…ya know?