Just tired? We wish!

Fatigue is not tiredness.

It is hard to imagine how weak or fatigued you are with this illness. I’m sorry if you can imagine as it means you must be a fellow sufferer. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. 

Sleep does not improve our condition. In fact the mornings can be the worst for me. We never wake up feeling refreshed or rested as human beings should. We are often hit by night after night of insomnia. Staying up all night is not nearly as fun as I remember it being at university!!! We are not lazy louts who lounge around all day watching television. We are often too poorly to watch tv. It requires energy that we do not have. It is simply too much for our brains to process. With me, my vision is still affected by my M.E. and so this makes it difficult to read a book or magazine. If my vision was to behave, my concentration levels are not always up to the challenge anyway because of the overwhelming fatigue. 

To cut a long story short, our bodies are not able to produce energy like they once did. Our batteries are flat and nobody knows how to recharge them, other than to rest but even that only charges us to a fraction of what we’d hope for. 


To be too fatigued to speak sounds ridiculous I know. However, the muscles needed to do so are sometimes too weak. The energy required to get these muscles going is no longer there.

Next time you send a text message think about what you are doing. Your fingers have to be strong enough to press the keys even on a touch screen phone. Your brain must function correctly so that you can form proper sentences and remember the conversation that you are engaged in. The effort it takes to move your arm and head and neck to pick up the phone… 

The same applies when you make a cup of tea. You must first lift the kettle. Run the tap. Fill the kettle. It is now even heavier than it was before. You reach up to open the cupboard. Get out a mug. Put it on the work surface. Get out a tea bag. Get a spoon from the drawer. Walk across the room to the fridge. Pull the fridge door open. Bend to get the milk. Close the fridge door. Walk back to the kettle. You must also remember that the kettle is hot and you should not touch it. With a condition such as mine you have forgotten these apparently unforgettable ways of life like needing to wear oven gloves when removing something from the oven…your brain ceases to function as it should. 

So no, we M.E. sufferers are not ‘just tired.’ 

How are you?

People ask because they care. It is lovely that they care. We are grateful and thankful. I am incredibly lucky that so many do care. It is a question, however, that has begun to fill me with dread and unease. How on earth does a person who feels so poorly everyday, answer such a question? It is easier when I am talking with my M.E. friends as they understand that ‘fine’ doesn’t mean fine, it means ‘today I no longer feel that I need to be in hospital.’ I’m sure people wonder and worry about whether they should ask it or not. I know that I do with my M.E. friends. We now word it slightly differently between us: “I hope today is an ‘okay’ day” A good day for us is probably the worst day imaginable for a healthy person. 


As human beings we are apparently unable to stop ourselves from sugar coating things. We cannot seem to deal with the cold, harsh truth that invisible chronic illnesses such as mine present. If I was to answer the question of ‘how are you’ honestly it would probably make you uncomfortable. It would probably make me uncomfortable too. You may think I am feeling sorry for myself, concentrating on the negatives. You may wish you had never asked and may never want to ask again. No one likes a moaner. You would not know what to say. It’s a no win situation I feel. You ask because you care and I don’t answer honestly because I care too. It is a tricky one. One that I am yet to get my head around. You may be wondering what it is I want from you. In honesty I’m not sure. But I know that I want your understanding, rather than your pity. And maybe a hug.

“It’ll be okay” will not suffice because the truth is it might not be. To remain at the peril of this  condition is not okay. It is no ones fault. There are simply no words for a response so brutal and harsh as our truth. Ours, sadly, is a hopeless situation. We cannot get better by mere positive thought. There are no proven treatments or drugs for us. We are mostly forgotten. Out of sight out of mind. But we exist. We are here. We are fighting our own war despite our disabilities. We have a voice. 
This is not negativity. I am a ‘glass half full’ person by nature. I am merely talking about life with an illness that still carries a stigma, even in 2012. 

What time is it?

Purple time! 


I call it purple time because when I was completing my activity diary for the CFS/ME clinic I had to colour my periods of proper rest in purple crayon. I was embracing my child-like state! 

Proper rest (or purple time) is a period of time, maybe only a few minutes long, when I have complete rest. No music. No tv. No listening. No talking. No reading. No nothing. Only breathing. Some people use meditation. I merely sit or lie with my eyes closed and concentrate on my breathing. It can be tricky to clear my head of thoughts and worries but I stick at it and have rest and relaxation. It is recommended for us M.E. sufferers and I can honestly feel the benefits, although short lived, afterwards. If I have an ‘itchy brain’ (a symptom I have where it feels as if insects are crawling between my skull and my brain) it is the only thing that can help relieve it. 

I do not sleep in the day time. Purple time is not nap time. I am retaining my brain so that it knows that daytime is for being awake and nighttime is for sleeping. It was hell for the first six months but I have replaced sleep with rest and now it is okay. I am rarely ‘sleep tired’ anyway…

Even my friends have jumped on the bandwagon. We were together for a friend’s birthday and the girls took their role as ‘carers’ very seriously (at times!) They made sure I still had my purple time, whether I wanted it or not. 

I try to incorporate this ‘proper rest’ into my daily routine, even on the days (rare as they may be) when I am out of the house. If a friend comes to take me out and parks in a Pay and Display car park, for example, I will use the time it takes her to walk and get a ticket to have a quick blast of Purple Time. Alternatively if we are spending the day at a relative’s house I will take myself off into another room for a few minutes of quiet. 

Rest is best!