Another Day With Chronic Illnesses

Today feels like it has dragged on and yet has lasted forever.

I woke up late for me at a little before 10am. Then again, there was a time I slept until noon or 1pm most days. I've managed over the last year and a half to move my waking time to around 9am. I now normally wake naturally between 8:30am and 9:30am. I was shocked to see it was almost 10 when I got up.

Of course, I also felt like crap when I got up. Still utterly exhausted. And it was late enough that I could hear my kids and grandson downstairs which means they would be making a mess of the kitchen while getting breakfast. I didn't feel like dealing with that so I didn't go down for coffee until after 11am. There was a little coffee left in the pot from yesterday, but I prefer fresh-brewed and didn't have the energy to clean the pot and make new coffee so I didn't have any. This was probably a poor decision and made my day worse.

By noon, I was having trouble concentrating and just felt so sleepy. By 1pm, I couldn't keep my eyes focused while I played on my phone. I couldn't focus on anything for more than a few minutes. My brain felt foggy and slow. I finally gave up around 2pm and took a nap.

That never really helps, though. I laid there until around 5, sort of sleeping off and on. I got up because it started to get really hot in the room (5pm is the hottest part of the day here so it was understandable). But I felt sick and still absolutely exhausted. Since then, I've managed to have dinner and am drinking a Diet Coke just trying to stay awake until at least 9pm otherwise it'll screw my internal clock up even more, but I'm ready to go back to bed.

I hate being this tired all of the time. I've literally done nothing today. Got up, used the bathroom, played on my phone, read some comments on Facebook, got cold pizza for lunch, took a nap, played on my phone, got leftovers for dinner and now I'm writing this. Oh, I guess I tried to knit for a bit right after I woke up because I had an idea for a pattern but couldn't work it out on my head. And I was too groggy to really do anything with it. I kept screwing up the pattern over and over because I can't think straight.

So, really, I can't actually do anything even if I wanted to because my thinking is so confused and disjointed. Nothing makes sense. I haven't read a book in forever because I get confused. I actually broke down in tears one day a few months ago while trying to read an article online because I read the same few sentences over and over, and I understood the individual words, but the paragraph still didn't make any sense to me. It was gibberish. I used to love to read.

I used to love to do a lot of things, but I can't anymore because of the fatigue and brain fog. Can't do anything physical (like going for long walks) because my body is too tired and can't do anything creative or intellectual (like writing, reading or knitting) because my brain doesn't work anymore.

It's just not a way to live. I'm so bored and depressed all of the time because I have nothing to do.

My husband is going to try to set up an appointment for my mental health tomorrow. I've just lost hope in ever finding anything to help. And of course, I'm completely starting over with a new doctor who will want to go through all of the meds again. It took years to find ones that worked last time and then they stopped working. I'm not sure I have the capacity to wait months to see if each thing works before moving on to another. More years of desperation and depression and barely hanging on but having to pretend everything is fine so my family isn't bothered. I don't know if I can do it anymore.