This morning I am laying on the couch staring out the window at a gorgeous summer day. A light breeze rustles the palms. The sun is shining, the sky is blue. It is a perfect day for a picnic or trip to the park. I, however, roll over and groan struggling to scrape together the energy to get up and prepare a healthy breakfast.
Today I am struggling with fatigue. Fatigue is one of the hardest and most unpredictable parts of cancer recovery. It comes on insidiously and leaves me struggling to leave the couch. Luckily over time the number of days I experience fatigue have decreased. Fatigue days are miserable. In hopes of learning to predict the physical or emotional triggers of my fatigue and prevent days like today I started a “fatigue log”. In the log, every day I experience fatigue I write about what happened the day of and day before.
Today is only my second day of fatigue since starting this log and my first entry was exactly 15 days ago. It has been over two weeks since my last day of fatigue. Not bad considering I used to struggle with it almost daily.
The fatigue started creeping in yesterday evening. Ironically yesterday was physically speaking an uneventful day. I woke at six, took my usual sunrise walk I have written about so many times, had omelets with my husband at an outdoor neighborhood café for breakfast, worked on my writing, and by the afternoon major storms moved in so my husband and I dedicated the afternoon to a Stranger Things marathon on Netflix.
Sometime during the afternoon I received a somewhat disturbing call. A family member who I saw two days previous felt sick and feverish with COVID-like symptoms. This sent pangs of fear through my body. Will I get sick? I am still immunocompromised and though I wore an N95 I was in a potentially contaminated environment for several days. Given my immune status, I would have typically avoided the trip but it was a family emergency and I simply had to go.
Sometime after the call and two episodes from the end of the Stranger Things season, I felt the fatigue creep in. It was around 7 in the evening. I took a shower, grabbed a book of ghost stories, and by 7:45 with the rain still pattering on the window panes was struggling to keep my eyes open. The next thing I knew it was 8am. I was asleep for close to twelve hours and still struggled to get out of bed and go about the day. As usual I pushed through the fatigue and still went on my daily walk, though later than usual. On arrival home after flopping on the couch and temporarily giving in, I decided to write this post.
Could the distress of receiving the phone call about my potential exposure to COVID or some other virus have triggered my fatigue? Or am I actually getting sick? I flipped back to my last fatigue journal entry and scanned through the paragraphs. The day prior to my last episode of fatigue I volunteered at a river trash cleanup and participated in some physically strenuous activities. Then something caught my eye. I had also received a distressing phone call that day about a family conflict. Two days of fatigue, two distressing phone calls. Could emotional distress be a trigger?
This is certainly a possibility though this past week I did work long hours on physically exhausting tasks. Still, the timing of the onset of the fatigue seems to correlate more closely with when I experienced the emotional distress. Today, the fear of getting sick nags at me. Will I end up in bed for a week? Will I have to cancel the work and volunteering I have scheduled for the next several days? Just thinking of these scenarios causes my stress levels to rise and I find myself wanting to crawl back into bed. Each time I clear my throat I wonder, is this the beginning? And the fatigue just won’t quit.
I suppose only time will tell if I am able to identify and predict what physical or emotional events will trigger the fatigue. Two episodes really isn’t enough to identify a pattern. So I will add today into my fatigue journal and continue pushing through and trying not to let it prevent me from participating in my normal activities.
I would love to hear from you. Have you struggled with fatigue after recovering from cancer or illness? Have you identified fatigue triggers? Can you predict when it may happen or what will make it better?
I guess the fatigue I had after my mastectomy and chemo therapy was handled by my one motto! Listen to what your body tells you! I am sure this is not applicable to everyone but it kind of helped me! When I was tired I rested when I felt increased energy I moved. Maybe simple but it worked for me!
Thanks for the advice! I’ve been trying this out and it definitely helps!