Fatigue is severe physical, mental & emotional exhaustion. Fatigue is unfortunately something people with Vasculitis, which includes me, experiences. Fatigue can be present whether or not a person’s vasculitis is in remission or an active flare up.
Vasculitis is also a progressive disease, meaning that meaning that it gets worse as time progressive, although progression can be slowed down with medical treatments.
Recently, I’ve been off work for 3 weeks due to sickness, caused by a Vasculitis flare up and the increased fatigue that it has caused. There have been days that I have slept for 18 hours. It has made me recognise how limited my energy, motivation and time is.
Your energy and motivation are limited resources. A good metaphor for explaining this concept is The ‘Spoons’ Theory by Christine Miserandino. Each spoon below is one unit of your daily energy.
Your energy and motivation are limited resources. A good metaphor for explaining this concept is The ‘Spoons’ Theory by Christine Miserandino. Each spoon below is one unit of your daily energy.
Each activity that you complete in a day costs you one or more spoons, depending on the effort, energy and motivation it requires. To explain this metaphor, let’s imagine that every activity takes one spoon. You wake up at the start of your day with 12 spoons. Here’s how you use your spoons:
You wake up.
You wash your face.
You make breakfast.
You eat your breakfast.
You get dressed.
You brush your teeth.
At this point you have already used half of your spoons and you’ve not even made it through the morning yet.
You get ready for work.
You travel to work.
You work.
You travel home.
You make tea.
You have a bath.
Now you have run out of spoons. You have two options: You can go to bed and rest, which will give you more spoons. Or you can decide to borrow spoons from tomorrow.
Due to the demands in life, you may opt to borrow spoons from tomorrow. But then you risk getting trapped in a cycle of constantly borrowing spoons from tomorrow.
As the days pass and you borrow more and more spoons, you’ll reach a point where there aren’t any left to borrow from tomorrow. You’ll be exhausted and burnt out.
The Spoon Theory has been adopted by people who are neurodiverse and people with chronic illnesses. But it can actually be applied to all. You. Me. Everyone we know.
I have had to accept my number of spoons is significantly less than other people. I went back to work this week, doing a shorter work week (4 days, rather than 5 days) and by Friday I felt exhausted. Working this number of hours, with the energy that it takes is unsustainable for me in the long term.
I have worked since being 15 years old. I was brought up that it is not just good for me to work, but also is how I contribute to others in society. However, there are other ways to contribute.
So right now, I’m thinking about what my plans for my future are and dealing with the emotions associated with the fact that working full time is completely unsustainable for me.
Blog soon,
Antony
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