Don't You Think She Looks Tired?

Molly Froude and Mel Kennedy

Fatigue: the French word for tired, and the price of living with a chronic condition.

In earlier articles, we have mentioned Miserandino’s Spoon Theory, a metaphor which perfectly describes how a chronic condition takes its toll on a person.

Fatigue is a symptom or by-product of many health conditions; Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Multiple Sclerosis (MS), cerebral palsy (CP), Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) to name a few. I have fallen asleep in classes before, or at least dozed in particularly ‘stimulating’ classes (ssh, don’t tell my lecturers!). I promise I wasn’t being rude; I just get hit with a sudden wave of fatigue and there’s nothing I can do.

Fatigue is often unpredictable. Some days, when spoons are less scarce, I can do a lot more than I perhaps expected to be able to do, and I don’t feel too tired to carry on. But then on other days, just getting out of bed to make a cup of tea is too strenuous a task. It’s not like normal tiredness either - it does differ from person to person, but fatigue is often compared to feeling as though you are neck-deep in thick mud when you are just trying to move as normal, or with every step you take, it feels like you are dragging a huge pile of bricks behind you.

Physical conditions can be exhausting, but fatigue can also be caused by your mental health, which is why it is important to remember self care and taking time to be by yourself and relax. The world can stop for long enough to give us a chance to sit down and relax, or take a nap or a long bubble bath. For some people, a warm bath or shower can help with the aches and pains of fatigue too, so it’s good on both accounts.

When living with conditions like CP and MS, you learn that there are times when your body won’t allow you to be as productive as you perhaps ought to be, but no matter how hard you try there is just no energy left. It can be really hard not to beat ourselves up over this but we do try to show ourselves compassion, because all we will achieve by being frustrated or upset about it is more fatigue. It’s another part of our lives which we just learn to work with as best as we can.