Today in #ChronicFatigue : I hit a week of exercising every day, without skipping any. And given it has been 15 months since I stopped work, and this is the first time, I feel the need to celebrate that. In this state it is so easy to do too much and knock yourself out for the day(s) after.
It does feel a bit strange to celebrate though, because exercise in this context is 10 minutes at 4.5 km/h on a treadmill. For those of you not used to metric measures, this is a ludicrously minimal amount of exertion; I normally walk at around 6 km/h and ten minutes is, well, ten minutes. And if I try and do this twice too close together (like walking to get an ice cream, sitting for half an hour, and walking back) I wreck my energy levels and sleep for the following several days. #PostViralFatigue #LongCovid
So why a public post about this? Partly because it forces me to acknowledge the improvement myself. Partly to encourage other people hitting such "lack luster" milestones that no, this really is progress.
But also as a public service annoucement that post-viral/chronic fatigue feels and behaves differently to 'being tired'. You can carry out a task that doesn't feel like it is straining you at all - because it is well within your trivial strength levels - but which will leave you brain fogged, physically washed out, and unable to sleep properly for days afterwards. If you're getting hit by feeling like somebody has pulled the plug and feeling, well, stupid hours or even a day or two after being more active than normal, it might be worth looking into a longer description of how normal and chronic fatigue differ. The things that help in each situation are quite different.