Invisible Illness

   

I ran to the store tonight because we were out of sauce and needed it for the half made pizza, but that's not important.  The important part was that as I was driving up, I had to wait for a couple to cross the parking lot's version of a street.  The people were my age-ish, not particularly old, but walking at an insanely slow pace.  It took them probably a good minute to walk the distance of that narrow street - maybe 25 feet. 

It hit me and hit me hard.

I was that person.  I flashed back to being at that same store.  I thought I felt good.  I walked at a normal pace through the store and destroyed myself for two days.  Out of breath, lying on the couch, unable to do anything for two days because I walked through a store at a normal person's walking pace.

I remembered when I couldn't make it across a street in the time of a walk signal. 

I remembered desperately wanting to be able to do things but having to pick and choose what to do.  Something as simple as watching the Tuba Christmas, which meant walking from the car to the event, standing for 30min and walking back, well, that was a weekend's worth of energy expenditure right there. 

I teared up thinking about what it was like for me and what it is maybe like for one of that couple.  I felt for them, and for the former me.  No one sees anything wrong with you and yet there is something so very wrong that no doctor or research or diet plan or supplement can figure it out.  Very few understand, very few want to or care to understand.  Thankfully, those that do are the ones who matter.



And today? Am I all cured?

I'm not sure. 

I still have troubles, though nothing like they were.  I can do anything.  I volunteer, I work, I run around town like a chicken with my head cut off.  Except I do get tired.  I can sleep 9hrs a night (my normal) and still need a nap in the afternoon, for several hours.  It's crazy how much sleep I need.

I can't do hikes that involve any uphill.  My husband is sure that I just need to push through it or something.  He is always saying how it isn't so bad, or it's just a little way, but it makes me want to sit down and rest.  I feel like I did back then, like I can't possibly go any further.  I don't experience that when I take walks that are on fairly level ground, but the uphill kills (and downhill kills my knees, but that's a different issue entirely.)

And weight? I can't lose it.  I've tried Weight Watchers.  I've tried writing everything down.  I've even tried hcg.  I cannot lose weight.  Even with eating 500 calories a day on the hcg thing, I still only lost 5lbs in 2wks.  Really, that's it.  I'm not cheating when I do these healthy eating trials, I mean seriously, who would I be cheating? Me! I measure, I weigh, I log.  It does no good whatsoever which depresses me and makes me fall off the bandwagon.  It's hardly worth all that effort for no results.  I don't look better.  I don't feel better.  What's the point.

Still I am much, much, MUCH better than I was in those flashbacks I experienced tonight.  It was a sad and dark time for those years.  2003-2009 were so lost to me.  I am glad to be back in the land of the living, even if it is as an overweight, sleepy woman who can't climb hills ;)