I’m still tired……………..

Early last year I became anaemic.  I was so run down that I would HAVE TO nap three sometimes four times a day. If I didn’t  I would often get to a point where I would drop off to sleep no matter where or what I was doing simply because my body had really had enough and needed to shut down for a bit. (The most dramatic example of this was my kitchen fire last year.) If I tried to do something “normal” like working in the school canteen or going to do a big grocery shop, I would literally need to sleep for most of the next day or two (sometimes three). As it progressed I gradually cut all of my activities, prayer group, bible study, sewing group, brigade, helping at the kids school, swimming, gym, church. I didn’t have the energy for any of them. Just leaving the house to sit at someone else’s house for a couple of hours was incredibly taxing.

And people didn’t understand. I mean I looked OK. I was taking vitamin supplements wasn’t I? And I didn’t understand. I was taking supplements damn it!

Then the doctors decided that I should have a hysterectomy. Six to eight weeks for initial recovery they tell me, six to twelve months for full recovery. I’m at 9 weeks. My recovery from the op was easy. Not much pain or discomfort. I was very lucky. I thought to myself “Six to eight weeks. That will put me as being back on track by the time school starts back and I’ll be able to jump back into things where I had to leave off 8 months ago.”

I am so stupid. I’m still tired. And while I might be mostly recovered from the immediate effects of my operation, I’m not recovered from everything that led up to it. The busyness of the past few days with back to school routine has knocked me on my ever widening arse!  Just getting up with the kids in the mornings, keeping a very basic household routine through the day (no heavy cleaning involved) and getting everyone’s reading/music practice/books covered/lunches made at night is exhausting me.

I realised while I was reading Naomi’s blog the other night that I had some really unrealistic expectations of myself. I thought that having had my op and having been on supplements for six months that I should be OK by now. I didn’t take into account that the problem causing the anaemia started 19 months ago,  wasn’t solved until  late November and that the supplements had been a mere stop gap to prevent it getting worse, not make it better,  so even though I’ve been taking the supplements for so long, it’s only in the past few days that I can tell that my levels are starting to return to normal.

How do I know?

My pee has turned yellow. (Weren’t expecting that answer were you?) That really bright fluro yellow that your pee goes when your vitamin supplements aren’t all being used up and are flushing through your body. The whole time that I have been taking these supplements, this is the first time that has happened.

I really need to remember that it took me nineteen months to get that sick, so I need to give myself more than two months to get better. So instead of vainly trying to jump back into my busy old life, I’m now going to continue to take things easy. I’m going to sit down with my family and explain that ‘mum isn’t quite ready to be normal again’ (and they’ll say “were you ever normal?”) and re divvy up the household chores. I’m going to slowly add activities back into my week, one at a time, over the next twelve months starting with helping at the school canteen once a month (late this month). I’m going to think about my choices of where I put my time and energy and cut completely the things that I find draining………….. I’m thinking that this time NEXT year is a much more realistic time frame for feeling like I should have everything all back together again.