Hyper Alert

A friend of mine who has dealt with chronic health challenges since her teens told me she saw a study that showed a higher incidence of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in people with chronic illness.  I totally get it, at least the obsessive part.

Have you ever seen one of those service dogs on TV, the ones that watch their humans for signs of seizures or narcolepsy attacks?  The dogs can sense an attack coming on, and they can alert their owner to lie down in a safe place or seek help.  Those dogs never stop watching their human.  They are never far away, and 98% of the time they are staring at their person with an unwavering intensity, concentrating like crazy, looking for those subtle signs.  It would appear completely neurotic if it weren't their job to be an alert dog.

These days I watch myself with almost that degree of intensity.  Anytime I'm not focused on a particular task at hand, I'm checking in with myself.  How am I feeling?  Am I cold? Hot? Sweaty? Thirsty? Hungry? Do I need to put on a sweater/eat a snack/drink some water? How tired am I?  Are my limbs feeling at all weighted or weak?  How much effort am I having to expend walking this mildly uphill stretch of my commute to work?  Am I having any aches and pains? How tender is that sore spot on my back today? Am I feeling grumpy or irritable? How is my breathing today?  Any chest tightness/coughing?  Etc.

I have learned to be my own alert dog.  No one else is going to do it.  I've learned the hard way that if I overpush myself I'll end up in a setback.  Low fever and fatigue for 4-5 days.  I spent last weekend (it was a long weekend in Canada) pretty much stuck indoors, recuperating from fatigue leftover from Val's birthday party the weekend before.  I was fine that Monday, but I had taken myself right to the edge of tolerance, so when Tuesday and Wednesday turned out to be tough days (physically and psychologically) it pushed me over the edge. I'm pretty sure I was working with a fever on Thursday, although I didn't measure it when I got home.  I didn't want to know.

If I stay out until I actually feel noticeably tired, I've already gone too far.  I have to stick to schedules and bedtimes.  I have to watch for tiny signs of stress or fatigue and respond to them.  This is not how I want to live.  I would like to be one of those people who throws caution to the wind and has at least moderate adventures.  I would like to be able to stay out late and watch fireworks displays down by the lake.  I would like to travel across time zones.  I would like to push hard through a physically challenging day and collapse at the end of it, deliciously exhausted, knowing that I'll sleep like a log and wake up feeling fresh the next day.  I'll sleep like a log alright, but I just don't bounce back so easily.

Because I don't look sick, I worry that people are going to think that I'm babying myself unnecessarily.  I don't want to come off looking like a neurotic hypochondriac.  When people ask me how I am, I always weigh how much truth to tell.  If I say "fine", other things I come out with later aren't going to make a lot of sense.  But if I'm always complaining, well, no one wants to hear that.  The message I have to get across to people is "I'm fine/functional today, but that is always conditional on my strict adherence to my body's rules, and therefore I cannot ever come out with you to a late-night event, and no matter how gently I schedule myself in the end all my plans are tentative, pending another possible setback."

I worry that my family will think that I'm lazy or ungrateful because I don't invite them over for dinner to repay their invitations.  Frankly I'm scared to set up that much of a commitment of my energy.  Some weeks I barely have the resources to get through work without showing any weakness.  I need keep my weekends fairly clear so that I can rest as much as I need to.  I'll go out for meals at restaurants, or visit others, because those things aren't very draining, but planning to have people here - that feels like too much of a commitment.

Sometimes I'll have several good weeks consecutively, when I start to feel almost normal, but I've learned the hard way not to get cocky.  Feeling normal is not the same as being normal.

I even worry that all y'all are going to get tired of hearing my health woes.  This isn't a journal, it's a blog, and the truth is that no one wants to read about someone else's obsessive worrying time after time.  I can only write so much about the subject here before I wear out even my loyal readers.  I'd better switch it up with some more entertaining fare on a regular basis.  That proves to be a challenge sometimes.