I will be 3 months post op tomorrow. My brain tells me that people will think that I should be all better. My brain tells me that I should stop being tired and just get up, so I decided that I can't trust my brain and did some research. Turns out that fatigue after a hysterectomy is NORMAL. Actually, one study showed that 1/3 of women are still tired after 6 months! So, what should I do? I looked that up too and the results hit surprisingly close to home.
People (read "me") have a tendency to experience spurts of energy in with the fatigue and so, when one of those spurts hits, they do absolutely everything that they possibly can in that time (walk the dogs, go to the store, clean etc.) and then fall over and can't do a thing for a day or two. Oh, this is so me! I went to Lawrence this weekend to watch my husband's friend run a 100 mile marathon! That is on the top of the most amazingly inspiring thing I've personally ever seen happen and I was thinking wow, I'm such a loser. But that's my problem really. That achievement is monumental and amazing, but it doesn't mean that everything I do is automatically crap. Over the course of the weekend, I put in over 16,000 steps (a personal record since the surgery), rode 8 hours in a car, and got less than 5 hours of sleep. All on my post surgery, fibromyalgia body. Even as I share this with you, my brain is still trying to tell me that it's crap. I haven't gone to the gym, I haven't finished my birthday skirt, I haven't haven't haven't. I'm exhausted. You know what that article said? I should rest. As much as I need to, whenever I need to. And even as I was thinking it, the article said that a lot of people have trouble with the concept of rest. It makes them feel weak or inadequate or just plain lazy. Me, me, and me. Every single day, I have made a list and tried to do all of the things on it. Every single day, I have done chores or ran errands or exercised or sometimes all of the above. I do not rest when I am tired. I do not just sit down with a bag of carrots and peanut butter (don't judge me) and binge watched Netflix. Hell, most days I don't even let myself take a nap. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to just let myself be. So, how does this rest thing work? I'll do some experimenting and get back to you on that. |
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December 2022
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