How I went from collapse to conquer with my health

This post was updated on 15/06/21

For the last 10 days or so, I’ve had a flare up of symptoms, which includes

• Weakness in legs
• Difficulty standing, walking
• Drop falls
• Severe tiredness; struggling to keep eyes open and speech slurred.

When I’ve felt like this, I’ve had little option but to rest. I haven’t had the brain power to do anything else. There is no doubt that having a flare up is frustrating etc. No one is going to enjoy them.  I had to cancel or change plans, including going to a birthday party of a good friend. Well there is never a good time to be ill though is there. So rather than dwell on it and think life is on hold, I acknowledge how I am feeling and accept it means I need to rest. That’s not wasting time. It is exactly what I need.

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So that I could concentrate on and prioritise rest, other things took a back seat. Daily tasks around the house and some of my blogging activities had to wait. Or in the case of household chores, my lovely husband did the majority. My tendency is to be planned and organised. To have a clean and tidy house every day and cook meals from scratch for example. These are obviously good habits to have-this could be a blog post in itself, so I won’t go into detail now. However in order to concentrate on rest, I had to prioritise rest over anything else.

I stripped everything out of my day didn’t try to stick to a routine or a list of what I had to do at certain times of the day. The pressure was off. This in itself probably helped in relaxing my mind if nothing else. I also didn’t set an alarm. I went to bed when I felt tired enough and slept until I woke up naturally. Letting my body recover until it needed to.

Then each morning I would have breakfast, often a Green Thickie prepared with the help of my husband G. Click here to find out more about Green Thickies. Then I decided on what to do next based on how I felt. Felt ok? I had a shower and got dressed. Other end of the scale was if I needed to go back to bed, I did. Then of course there was anything in between. I watched a fair bit of Grey’s Anatomy! Oh I love that program. I also really loved reading-when I could keep my eyes open long enough! If I couldn’t however, I put an audio book on. Then I could still get lost in a story.

What I did aim to do every day was drink at least 2 litre of water a day, using my bottle like this one:

It’s well known that drinking water is good for you all the time. Dehydration can cause fatigue so it is beneficial to keep your fluids topped up for a number of reason. More information can be found in this link. http://www.fibromyalgia-natural-relief.com/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-dehydration-and-pain

There is no defined period of how long a flare up lasts. You just need to take it a day at a time and look after yourself. After 10 or so days, I believe I am over the other side of. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I’m symptom free. It means my symptoms are more under control. I go back to my usual method of pacing myself and living each day, in a gradual way of adding tasks and activities back in. As always, I have to be kind to myself. If I haven’t got the energy, then that ironing can wait!

Can you relate to anything in this post?
I hope this post has helped at least one person know they are not alone and perhaps given some ideas you can implement yourself.

Take care of yourself and others

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