If you have MS you will know about fatigue but it is hard to make healthy people understand. My way of getting the message accross is to say;
Imagine you are a healthy fit person who has run 400metres around the race track as fast as you can and I now ask you to do the same again as fast as you can. You will manage it but you will feel the affects of the second run much more and you will be completely worn out; in fact you are feeling fatigue. The end of the second lap is the point reached by MS sufferers after a very short period of doing a physical task. It could be just a minute of effort and fatigue sets in. It could simply be writing a letter. The MS recovery time will also be much longer.
Fatigue has just set in writing this post!!! I need a rest!!!
How do members of the Forum make people understand?
Hi Patrick I don’t suffer from fatigue and I admit that I don’t understand it. However that was a good explanation you gave, clear and easy to understand. Cheryl:-)
I’m undiagnosed but undergoing tests for suspected MS. The extreme fatigue is the worst symptom ever. I can cope with everything else but this. I work 12 hour shifts, 3 a week. My days off are spent in bed recovering after doing the school run. I can get up at 7.30 am, be back in bed 9am-2pm, do school run, tea etc and back in bed for 8pm. I am only 29, I rarely go out or see friends because I need sleep. It rules my life.
I’m undiagnosed but undergoing tests for suspected MS. The extreme fatigue is the worst symptom ever. I can cope with everything else but this. I work 12 hour shifts, 3 a week. My days off are spent in bed recovering after doing the school run. I can get up at 7.30 am, be back in bed 9am-2pm, do school run, tea etc and back in bed for 8pm. I am only 29, I rarely go out or see friends because I need sleep. It rules my life.
i dont bother trying to explain-its too exhausting! why would i want them to know anyway? i am guessing the answer will be to help them/others undertstand. but in reality they cant! i can sympathsise with UR fatigue and u mine but they are different things cos we cope differently with them. save ur energy for the possible things-not the impossible!
Before I was diagnosed I felt tired a lot and thought I was simply unfit. I took up jogging and eventually was able to run 3 miles in the morning and 3 miles in the evening. Then the MS caught up and I had to stop hard exercise. I continued working for 25 years after diagnosis as the MS progressed and I retired 3 years ago aged 60; because the MS was getting to the stage where I could no longer work. I can’t run a step now but I am not going to let this Multiple Sclerosis take over my life completely. “Adapt and overcome” as Clint Eastwood said to his Marine recruits in the film Heartbreak Ridge.
So Superbeck, don’t despair, try to slow down and allow yourself to take longer to do what healthy peeps do in a jiffy.
I work in blakenall walsall, do you ever go to the art exhibitions at the blakenall village center?
back to the topic in hand. I explain that i go to bed tired wake up tired and stay tired it never goes away. Every day its like trying to walk through quick sand as it gradualy drags you down. Its like trying to climb a mountain every day but never getting to the top because it has drained the lifed out of you. This tends to get the point across until they forget and ask me to go for a walk, a long shopping trip or work asking me to do overtime when this is the reason i reduced my hours. but of course i can never forget.