I have been on a bit of a downward spiral of late. Struggling across many facets of life. As an indication- my Christmas tree is still up. Yes. It is nearly Valentines day and I haven't managed to get my tree down. I manage to get my kids to school, and fed healthy food, and to bed on time. I manage to show up for my own job, albeit for less hours than my boss (and I) would ultimately like. And that is where my success stories pretty much stop. I have been fighting severe, chronic fatigue for over a year now. It comes and goes, so I didn't see it as an overall issue until recently. I've spent the last year believing it was due to hypothyroid (possibly Hashimoto's syndrome) and/or adrenal fatigue. Although I'm not totally taking those things off the list, I have come to a new, more likely culprit for my exhaustion.
Sleep disorder.
I have been referred to a sleep center for a sleep study. We reviewed what I know and it looks highly likely that I suffer from sleep apnea. There are some other possibilities as well, but for now I am focusing on that one.
Once I began considering this as an issue, I started to realize that I may have suffered from this my whole life. There are many times that I look back at my life and have moments of such extreme exhaustion that were clearly at a clinical level of unusual, but I simply took to be normal. I remember getting in trouble at work once because I had to do a late airport run (delayed flight) and called in late the night before because I knew I would be non-functionally tired. My then supervisor asked me how I could possibly know I'd be too tired. I thought she was nuts and wondered how could you not know you'd be that tired. If I got less than a full 8 hours of sleep, I was affected by it. I thought that was normal. We should be getting 8 hours right? Less should make us tired, right?
Apparently, not exactly the way I experience it... Lack of sleep affects everything. So the past few days I've really had to fight believing what I'm feeling. Right now I feel depressed, disconnected, exhausted, sore, run down, and overwhelmed. Life is too much. I want so desperately for my life to be happier, better, fuller, but I can't even stay on top of what is on my plate right now.
My sleep study is scheduled for this week. I am staying focused on not believing how I feel until I get some answers and some solutions. Once I can start sleeping well, hopefully the rest will resolve itself. Fingers crossed!
