Is it real?

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!