This morning, the heaviness descended.
Normally, upon waking to my alarm, I get the same groggy inner groan that everyone gets. My body begs for just a little more time to sleep. But I’m a morning person, and in the minutes that follow, a happy wakefulness usually comes over me. I’m able to comfortably rise and turn on the lights. By the time I’m making breakfast, I’m often singing to myself.
That didn’t happen today. Instead, there was this heaviness. It feels as if my limbs are weighted down by bricks, or as if a sopping wool blanket has been draped over me and is making it difficult to move.
I drag myself to the bathroom. I haul myself down the stairs. I fumble through cooking breakfast then sink into my seat with my head on my arms, too exhausted to eat.
“I think I’m having an energy crash,” I mumble to Ron. He is packing to go to work. I always make our breakfast while he gets ready, and because he relies on me for this, I’ve forced myself to cook today instead of staying in bed. He murmurs in sympathy while he eats. Soon he’s off, leaving for his teaching job, and I’m left alone.
My own job is less conventional than his. I’m a self-employed writer who works at home, which gives me the flexibility to take care of my health.
Being able to live on mainly Ron’s salary is an enormous privilege, and we’re taking advantage of it, because we haven’t quite figured out how I would handle a conventional job now that my illness has become more serious. I’m not sure what I’d do about these energy crashes, for instance. Or about the many, many appointments that often eat up my time.
Because my work is so flexible, I also wind up with a lot of extras on my plate. It’s Monday, and this is going to be one of those weeks when urgent house tasks, plus my own medical appointments, have added up. I anticipate very little time to write.
The most urgent thing is that our cat peed on the bed over the weekend, and this morning I have to take her to the vet. That means I still can’t rest. I spoon breakfast—buckwheat porridge and apple slices—into my mouth and steel myself for the ordeal of getting dressed.
An energy crash changes the texture of my world. This heaviness is a unique brand of fatigue. It’s not mere tiredness. It feels as though I’m moving through molasses, and at the same time, as though my whole body is empty of power, like my battery life has been drained to near zero. I have no gumption. It’s hard to make myself care about anything, such as holding down a job or meeting obligations. All I want is to rest.
It’s been five years since my diagnosis with ulcerative colitis, and the crashes aren’t nearly as frequent now as they were a couple years ago, when I was recovering from my biggest health crisis. Back then, I was trying to work but could never muster the forty hours I had done before my crisis—even thirty hours left me drained. After a year of struggling, I quit to focus on writing and health.
I’ve now been in remission for over two years, and I haven’t had a crash in a few months. This one is taking me by surprise. I’ve never known what causes or triggers them, but they seem to be par for the course with chronic illness and autoimmune disease.
In my case, they can last hours or days. There is no remedy but rest. Working only makes them worse and prolongs them.
At the vet, I spend a lot of time slumped in chairs, my head resting on a fist, my eyes closed. Kili, our sweet cat, mews plaintively from her crate. Back home, I still can’t rest, because all the bedding needs to be washed to get rid of the cat urine odor. I stumble up and down the stairs with the laundry. Then I eat lunch and drive, in a fog, to my next appointment.
This one is about my eyelid. A few weeks ago, a rash developed there, and today was the soonest a specialist could see me. I often have random appointments like this. Being prone to autoimmunity means I get a lot of strange inflammatory ailments, and because I’m on immunosuppressive medication for ulcerative colitis, infections often linger.
This eyelid rash could be either an infection or a new autoimmune symptom. Sure enough, the doctor proclaims it to be blepharitis, inflammation of the eyelid. I can add it to the list of seven or eight skin conditions I have on various parts of my body, all of them autoimmune.
He prescribes an antibiotic and steroid mix that I am to rub on the eyelid four times a day. We make another appointment in a couple weeks—there goes another couple hours of writing—and I plug a few daily alarms into my phone to remind myself about this new med.
Driving home, I keep being startled by things on the road. A stop sign appears where I hadn’t noticed one, making my heart jump as I quickly brake. A car seems to materialize out of nowhere. In a traffic jam on the freeway, I change lanes and then slam on my brakes when I turn to face forward and the car in front of me is much closer than I had expected it to be.
I haven’t had to slam on my brakes in years. Shaken, I try to be more cautious the rest of the way home. I am apparently too tired to even drive safely.
I forget this sometimes, and chide myself for forgetting again—I shouldn’t drive during energy crashes. Once, a few years ago when I was too tired to drive, I misjudged the distance between cars in a parking lot and dented the car in the spot next to mine. Today, back home, I count my blessings as I trudge to the front door.
I collapse on the couch and sleep there all afternoon. The cats curl around me, nestled into my legs and above my head.
I awake in the early evening. I had hoped that resting all afternoon would make the crash subside, so I could attend an evening event I’ve been looking forward to for weeks. One of my passions is bridging the political divide, and I recently discovered a group called Compassionate Listening that offers a twice-monthly workshop on conflict transformation. The second session will be tonight.
I’ve already paid for it and have done the recommended reading, but try as I might, I just cannot summon the strength to go. I email the leaders saying I need to stay home. I’m too tired to be disappointed. My disappointment will hit when I feel better.
I spend the evening on the couch. The crash continues all of the next day, and that day I can finally rest more.
This was supposed to be a writing day, and I do manage to get a couple hours done in the morning, sunken into the couch with the computer on my lap instead of sitting upright at my desk. When I become too tired to think, I binge several episodes of “Star Trek: Voyager” on Netflix. The old “Star Trek” shows are slow and cheesy and easy to watch. For me, they are perfect for crash days.
In the evening I try a walk with Ron. We shuffle around our neighborhood, enjoying the warm sun and fresh air. I feel a little better and think maybe the crash is ending. This walk is a trial.
I muse aloud, wondering what brought the crash on. Maybe working too hard on Sunday? Looking back, I can remember feeling tired Sunday evening.
“It’s so frustrating,” I say. “I can’t predict when this’ll happen. I did the same amount, that day, that I usually do on a weekend.” I try to take one rest day and one work day each weekend, and Sunday had been my work day. I had spent it making repairs around the house, followed by an hour of exercise. Nothing more rigorous than what I normally do.
“I never know,” I say, “whether pushing through fatigue will make me feel better or make me crash.”
“I think with you, it’s better to err on the side of resting,” Ron says.
“I know…” I sigh. “But sometimes, pushing through actually kicks me out of fatigue.”
This is the confusing thing.
With many chronic illnesses, including mine, it’s often good and even important to be active, even if you’re generally tired. Multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia patients, just to name two examples, are urged to exercise as a way of combating fatigue. Exercise and activity is healing for the body.
Often, when I’m tired and I exercise through it, I do feel energized afterwards. I discovered this on a road trip with Ron years ago. I’d been tired for days but had decided to give hiking a try. I assumed I would pay for the decision later, but I’d been missing out on so many hikes and sightseeing opportunities that I decided it was worth it—we were in the Black Hills, and I didn’t know if I’d ever come back here again.
Determined not to miss this, too, I followed Ron up a narrow trail that climbed through meadows and forests. To my surprise, the longer we walked, the less tired I became. By the end of the hike, I felt energized and better than I’d felt on the whole trip. I was elated and chagrined. I should have tried hiking much sooner!
That hike was early in my illness. By now, I think I understand what happened that day—I was tired, but I wasn’t in a crash.
It turns out there are two kinds of fatigue: normal fatigue and crashes. In the Black Hills, what I felt was more like a general, long-term slump in energy from being ill. Normal tiredness can be overcome with a walk. Crashes can’t.
This evening, my walk isn’t helping like it did that day in the Black Hills. The crash must not be over; I only feel more tired. My lungs feel compressed, like they’re struggling to take in air. This isn’t what my body needs today.
As we approach our house, I realize that Sunday afternoon, not Sunday evening, was really when I first became tired. I just didn’t recognize it, yet, as a crash. Even now, with years of experience, it’s impossible to tell the difference at first.
I often only understand that I’m in a crash when I notice that my fatigue isn’t going away. That means I have to exercise by trial and error each time, feeling out whether the exercise is helping or hurting. On Sunday, I had brushed my fatigue aside, and only on Monday did I understand that Sunday’s exercise had made things worse.
Back home again, I return to the couch. Ron and I spend the evening watching Netflix and working on a crossword together. I turn in early. By nine thirty I am fast asleep.
Wednesday morning, I awake feeling normal. As mysteriously as it came, the crash has passed.
I hum softly to myself while I make us breakfast. Today I have two more appointments, but in between them, I won’t need to rest as much. I can pick up where I left off with my work.
