Bleeping Fatigue

Morning Bleeps. Bleeps? Peeps that blog, like it?

If you have come here today hoping to be lifted up with a silly anecdote or embarrassing story then sadly I am letting you down because I am feeling totally hacked off.

I am so tired and yet I have slept through the night four nights in a row, a minor miracle for this insomniac. I should be refreshed, with a spring in my step but it would seem that my "get up and go" got up and went. What is left behind is someone that resembles a hot mess in a bathrobe, sitting on the sofa trying to build up enough oomph to shower ... again.  This is getting OLD!

I have some design work to do today, which is good as business sucks right now. I love running my own business and being able to work from home but the downside right now is that the economy has hit hard. The first thing people seem to cut back on is advertising, brochures and websites (I get that rent needs to be paid but you also have to advertise and keep trying to get business people!) and so it makes it so hard to survive right now. The end result is a seriously overdrawn bank account and no apparent light at the end of the tunnel.

The problem is that I literally do not have the energy to be as pro-active as I need to be. It is making me nervous because the reality is that I need to figure out how I balance feeling like crap every day with getting new clients and keeping my business afloat. How do people with MS run marathons when I don't have the energy to run to the front door when the postman comes?

Thankfully I have my loyal clients who are amazing and are totally supportive and I appreciate them so much. It isn't working with existing clients that I am struggling with, it is trying to get "out there" and gain new accounts that I can't handle right now. I have no "fight" in me and it is a competitive market, I need to fight for new clients.

I'd like to digress here for a second to tell you something that happened with a client yesterday. This lovely client sent me an email asking if I got her web updates done from the day before. I replied that I did it right away when she emailed me (I'm good like that ha ha), had she refreshed her computer? I felt really bad when she replied that she had been expecting my usual "all done" email. Bloody cognitive issues I thought to myself, I was sure I had emailed her. I apologised for my brain fog.

Luckily she knows about my MS and she was totally understanding, as she always is. About an hour later I was looking through my sent emails looking for something else when I came across the email that sure enough, I had sent the day before. I forwarded it to her, saying that I thought I was going mad but relieved to know I hadn't imagined sending the email. She hadn't received it and apologised for making me feel like I was going crazy, she then asked if she "made tomorrows blog". So here you are Victoria, you made it and for the record I appreciate your business and your support.

I am drinking cup after cup of coffee to the point where I feel like if I was to cut myself open it would be coffee that came out of my veins instead of blood and yet I am not at feeling "caffeinated" enough to deal with my day. I think this is one of the hardest things to deal with, the mind-numbing, body-crushing fatigue.

When you try to explain MS fatigue to a non MSer you get the "oh yes, I get tired too" sort of response. This is literally debilitating. I know I have talked about it before and no doubt I will talk about it again because it is so hard to explain. This isn't just tired, I literally feel like I want to curl into a ball and not move. Blinking takes effort today. My body feels heavy, like it is being weighed down by an invisible force.

Anyhooo Bleeps, that's me for today, cheery cow aren't I? I am broke, fed up and have no energy to do anything about it. For the first time in years I have no holidays booked and no money to make plans for one (anyone that knows me will tell you how much my drunken, karaoke breaks mean to me). To add insult to injury, I am sitting here and my knees are throbbing and feel crazy hot from inside.  Who the heck has throbbing, burning knee caps? Sod off MS, I am not in the mood for you today.

So enough about me, how are YOU?

It Wasn't a Drive, Drive!

Good morning friends.

I would like to share a funny story with you today, something that I did that I probably won't live down for a while. Even when you can attribute something silly that you do to something serious like MS it can still be ammunition for the family (and in this case, your man) to take the Mickey out of you. This is definitely one of those times.

On Saturday, Phil and I didn't really have any plans and we had a "kid free" day so we wanted to do something to get us out of the house for a while. Since he isn't originally from our lovely, little seaside town (he moved down this way after we met) there are still a lot of local villages and towns that we haven't explored together.

We decided to visit one of them as I had heard it was very quaint and neither one of us had been there. Well, it was a little disappointing (apart from a lovely little tea room where we stuffed our faces) and not much to look at so after an hour or so we got back in the car and started to drive, not really knowing where we were heading to.

I was having a good day (dizzy-wise) so I was in the driving seat and as I was driving along I jokingly asked Phil if the fact that we were "out for a drive" made us officially OLD now. Only old people "go for a drive" I said. He replied with "We are out for a drive, but not a drive drive".

Now I don't know if you guys are familiar with one of my favourite comedians but I started cracking up laughing at this point because I was instantly reminded of Micky Flanagan's stand-up routine of "Out out".

We were out for a drive, but not a drive drive. Ha ha! If you don't know Micky (shock, horror - how could you not?!) then take a minute (OK, just over 2 mins) to enjoy his genius!




Anyway, we were driving along and I asked Phil where he would like to go. He replied that he didn't know the area and so I suggested another little quaint seaside town (Whitstable) that I have been to and is really nice with cosy pubs and cute shops.

Off we went.

When I turned off at an exit, Phil asked where we were going (apparently he had just seen a sign saying it was 9 miles to go) and I replied I was taking him the "scenic route". Since he doesn't know the area that well he had no reason to ask for any more details.

We drove through country lanes for quite a while and then Phil realised that he was on familiar territory, roads that he recognised. It was at that time he asked "so how far to that place we are going?"

I looked at him all confused, "what place?" I asked.

"The place that begins with w"? at this point he looked at me like I had completely lost my marbles.

"What do you mean?" I replied

He looked at me for a second and asked "where are we going?"

"Home" I replied (at this point I was wondering why he was looking at me like he wanted to call the men with the white jackets).

"So, I guess we are not going to that seaside town that you told me about with the pubs and shops?" He asked.

OH. MY. GOODNESS!

I had completely forgotten where we were going. I had for some reason just started driving home, completely not realising that even though it was my suggestion, I had forgotten that we were on our way to Whitstable.

I started cracking up laughing but inside I was thinking "oh crap". I joked that I need to maybe start putting post-it notes in the car to remind myself where I am supposed to be going. How do you just forget where you are going? Especially when it's your own idea, you are en route and you are the driver?

Phil has since joked that he doesn't have to worry about me ending up going out and getting lost because I am like a homing pigeon and I will probably just keep driving home.

So enough about me, how are YOU?