Back From Fatigue

Here I am again, after two months' absence from this page; and what a time it has been!

When I wrote about moving to a new location in the county where I had once lived for 16 years, I was focusing on the necessary exercises we go through after a move -- establishing routines, learning directions, and creating new social networks. All of this is good for the brain, unless, of course, it's too much for the brain -- too much effort, too much stress, and, as a result, too much fatigue. Just too much everything!

I just became completely exhausted. Do you remember staying up late night after night, cramming for final exams? It wasn't until it was all over that you finally collapsed. I'm an active person, but last month if I closed my eyes after lunch, I fell asleep.

I started to worry that I had some unbearable illness; but if I do, doctors haven't found it. Of course I'm relieved, but then I start to worry. Maybe the doctor is missing something? Doctors here seem to be very upbeat and cheerful. Does that mean they're not paying attention?  I remember a doctor I had in Santa Fe. When I had a pain in the chest, she wouldn't see me unless I went to the ER to have all the tests for heart attack. Another time she ordered a full pulmonary panel because I told her I coughed once or twice when I woke up in the morning and had been a smoker. She was extreme, but you could be sure she left no stone unturned. She would find something even if it was just a pebble.

My physician is conscientious enough. When something is bothering me, she goes after the easiest explanation first. The last time I went to see her it was about my fatigue. All my recent blood tests had been normal. I asked her whether the move could have just wiped me out and she agreed we should explore that possibility. She didn't really have any suggestions, although she did applaud one of mine.

This is what I did:

At my local supplements store, Pharmaca, where you can find natural medicines as well as purchase your prescriptions, the helpful sales associate suggested a form of B-12 that is easily absorbed. It's called methylcobalamin. As we age, he told me, we become less able to derive B-12 from foods. Just one or two raspberry flavored sprays into the mouth, and in a few days you should be feeling better, he said. And I did.

Another thing I picked up was a formula for adrenal support. Constant stress wears out the adrenal glands located on top of each kidney; they release the adrenaline that triggers the rise of cortisol which is useful in an emergency but sustained high cortisol levels "destroy healthy muscle and bone, slow down healing and normal cell regeneration, co-opt biochemicals need to make other vital hormone, impair digestion, metabolism and mental function, interfere with healthy endocrine function and weaken your immune system," according to Marcelle Pick, OB-GYN nurse practitioner. Wow. I certainly did not know that cortisol can destroy muscles and bones! I've had lots of problems with weak muscles and bones. The Adrenal Support formula, a combination of several Ayurveduc adaptogenic hers, has been helpful.

Lastly, I decided to go to acupuncture. That's the idea my physician encouraged. Are you familiar with the People's Organization of Community Acupuncture? It's a great thing! POCA was created to make acupuncture available to working class people and others with limited incomes who needed to have regular treatments for chronic illnesses -- people like you and me, trying to "stay alive" after 60.

In Community Acupuncture clinics, which you can locate at the POCA website above, patients stretch out on recliners in a large open room. The practitioner visits each in turn, talking briefly, inserting the needles, then moving on to the next person. Relaxing music plays, and patients doze off or just enjoy a little quiet time while the needles do their work. It's so pleasant, and it's affordable! The clinic that I visit, in Petaluma, charges $20-40 sliding scale.

The supplements, the acupuncture, and taking a little more rest have helped recharge my system, though when I'm feeling good I tend to overdo, the way I did yesterday and the day before. As a Capricorn, I'm always trying to be productive; but as astrologer Rio Olesky recommended in his monthly horoscope for October, this month was a good time for Capricorns to find other ways to spend their time.

I just didn't listen. I've been trying all day to get out to the Community Farm where I do some volunteer gardening, when all I really felt like doing was going back to bed. Oh well. There's always time to go back to bed! At least I've updated my blog -- and in the process, I've remembered that I'm still recovering from adrenal fatigue. According to Marcelle Pick, recovery can take as long as four months! I'd better build up my strength before I start running around town again.

After I do this load of laundry . . .

Alone with Invisible Chronic Illness?

The grocery store is a place I like to be, especially a store packed with fresh, live produce, with good cuts of meat not pre-wrapped in plastic, a grocery store that smells like food and not like (gasp) Febreze or detergent.

But when I was sick with colitis (or IBS, or whatever you want to call it, since doctors don’t seem to agree) a trip to the grocery store almost always included a rush to the bathroom.

And what did I do with my three-year old son? Now many years later, I can’t remember. Probably, to his chagrin, he came to the rest room with me.

These are some of the unseen challenges of what has since been named Invisible Chronic Illness (ICI) – symptoms like the severe chronic pain that comes with fibromyalgia; nausea and cramps with irritable bowel syndrome; fatigue that is the hallmark of chronic fatique syndrome and many other conditions; depression from having to put up with all these things, and the isolation that illness inevitable produces.

So it is surely a blessing for people with ICI that the Internet now offers a forum for interaction with other people contending with similar difficulties that keep them at home and alone.

In September, I listened to some of the speakers at a virtual conference on ICI. You can still hear many of the presentations by visiting the page.  Life Coach Trish Robichaud spoke about her own difficult recovery from heart surgery; she also suffers from multiple sclerosis and chronic depression. Former athlete Tiffany Westrich offered tips for coping with the threat to a person’s sense of identity when you can no longer do the kinds of things that once defined you. Many other talks were offered on various topics connected to coping with life when life becomes transformed by chronic illness.

This morning I’ve been reading some of the blogs that are also available at this heartwarming site created by Lisa Copen, herself a victim of ICI. Lisa has had rheumatoid arthritis (RA) since she was 24 but she manages to raise her son and stay in her marriage, writing books and updating her site(s) at 3 am when she can’t sleep. She has made chronic illness her ministry http://restministries.com/, and through this work she offers tremendous support to people isolated by their health struggles.

And it is surely needed. Isolation, unfortunately, is one of the key difficulties of living with invisible illness, or with any chronic illness for that matter. And when it isn’t apparent that you’re unwell -- when “you look so good,” as friends like to tell you – and people find it hard to believe you are sick, the widening gulf between you augments your sense of separation from the everyday, “normal” world. Some people will even think you are faking it, that you didn’t come in to work because you are lazy; or that you are just plain mentally ill.

This lack of understanding from others is one of the chief challenges faced by the people who write on these pages…that friends, neighbors, co-workers, and folks they meet on the street (when they do manage to get out of the house) don’t understand what’s going on with them.

“Jen” speaks eloquently about this problem in her post “What You Don’t See” at her blog Meditatio: My World As It Is Sung. After running through all the things that may be going on with her when she doesn’t greet you on the street – she has fibromyalgia, which causes terrific pain, and with that comes depression, migraine and IBS – she winds up with this short message: “So please… don’t assume you know what is going on with me or with the average person on the street. Many of us have chronic conditions that we appear to hide well but are still just as real as the ones that manifest outwardly.”

Several people comment to say Wow, who knew, and also, How judgmental we have been! “Stacy” writes, “This post does bring to light the need to be compassionate at all times, no matter what we *think* is happening.”

If there’s a gift hiding behind every dark cloud (and I tend to believe there is!), a message we can receive from the sufferings so many people endure today, inexplicable as it may seem, then perhaps it is that very realization: That the person who snubs us in the grocery store or who explodes in anger over the loss of a parking space or wears sunglasses at night may actually be in need of our compassion, not our judgment, not our wrath.

It’s an important lesson in a wrathful, hostile world, a gift that we may receive in deep gratitude, as we open a door or carry a package for someone who might really appreciate being seen as they cope with one of the most difficult challenges in life, and sadly, one of the most common.

More about ICI in the posts to come. Thanks for reading!