The Overwhelming, All-Consuming Fatigue

The first time it happened I thought, "I must be coming down with something."

There were no body aches. Just excessive, nauseating, bone-crushing fatigue. "Weird virus this is," I remember thinking. "Generally there would be body aches and maybe fever. But not this time." I lay around for a day, thinking I could head off whatever the illness might be.

After 3 days of laying around, I was still just as tired as ever. And I had to work. I'm a freelancer, so my schedule is pretty flexible, but I couldn't justify any more lack of productivity. So I slogged through another couple of days before I finally felt better. That was in June, 2006.

This happened again somewhere about a month later. I came back from a very restful vacation and immediately felt dragged out the next day. I lost another several days to the fatigue.

By August, I was starting to get kind of worried. It happened a third time and I tried to just push through it. I'm a rabid Jazzerciser, and had to ditch a class because I was so tired I didn't know if I'd be able to drive home. I had several other classes where I essentially walked through the routines just to finish.

Then I started to notice the mental fuzziness. My mind would go completely blank. I would ask someone a question and then not remember to listen for the answer. I would look at them, hear them, but not retain a single bit of information. I could not solve any problems during these episodes. I could not plan meals. I had a hard time deciding between two choices...actually, I would just not decide. I didn't spend any mental energy making decisions. I just would mentally sit on the issue.

I tried increasing the protein in my diet. I tried adding some caffeine. My weight had dropped in the spring because I was doing several days of Jazzercise (another attempt to boost my energy level), and as a freelancer who writes about education, I had many days when I was just too busy following stories to eat regularly. When the fatigue episodes came on, I would get listless and the nausea I experienced made food seem like the last thing I wanted.

This is a very troubling symptom when you also write about food.

So my weight dropped a bit again. I've never been a particularly heavy person. At 5'5" my average adult weight has been around 140. By September 2006 I was jazzercising 5 days a week and my weight had dropped to 125.

My friend and Jazzercise instructor stepped up and started to sort of lead me. She encouraged me ... cajoled me ... to go to the doctor. She gave me questions to ask. She did research. She mentioned PMS--something I'd never had before. I had taken birth control pills from the time I was 21 until 2005 when I had the hysterectomy. 23 years. The hormones in the pills had always kept me "even." Before that I always sailed through menstrual cycles. Maybe minor lower back pain. Since I was essentially BORN irritable, I didn't really have periods of irritability!