So Easy to Overdo
I have quietly, without sharing, been feeling a little more able. On some warm days I have taken my dog down the block to the beach and slowly walked for up to an hour. I have even done this two days in a row. I would say that I have walked for up to an hour outside the house on as many as 7 days so far this month. That's 7 one hr walks in 25 days - usually with at least a day's rest between.
My knees are sore and, when I return from a walk, my forearms and hands go numb which is a new and very odd symptom. But, aside from this, and the occasional pounding heart and breathlessness which is not new, things were going quite well.
So eager was I to do this extremely pleasant thing - walk with my dog on the beach - that I have let my apartment slide perilously close to filthy and well within the realm of overwhelmingly confusing.
My cognition has not been good despite my increased ability to walk. In fact, my ability to think was rapidly deteriorating as I used my leg muscles and I have not been able to read or write without great difficulty. Until today, I was able to speak.
Early this morning I had to visit a dentist 3 blocks from my house for xrays - no dental work, just xrays. It was brutal. She inclined the chair too swiftly at one point and I nearly passed out. Even when raised slowly and incrementally, I could not talk or think in an upright position for several minutes but only stared blankly.
When I got home and lay on my couch/bed I was freezing and shivering no matter what I pulled over myself. I was in full blown malaise, thermostatic instability, weakness, visual disturbances and descending into what I like to call the mini coma which lasted for 5 hours. I'm still weak, shaky, cold, confused... and now I have all of that in a horribly cluttered and dirty apt.
I don't know if this is pertinent to this thread about the CAA but it seems to have become about how to determine what is too much or too little for us. I think my experience is illustrative of how difficult and fraught with consequences the activity of increasing activity is. It is necessary to pay attention to so many different aspects of energy use.
The effort of writing this makes me cry with fatigue and frustration at how hard it is to do - and I am by nature a ridiculously merry creature.
I believe it is only we who can understand the frighteningly delicate balance in which we live. There is a place for stretching... movement... exercise... but it would take a very skilled person intimately knowledgeable about ME to work with a person in order to help them to stay in balance with needs and abilities.
Traditional "rehabilitation" which I believe informs the practice of "graded exercise" is about pushing through the pain and no matter how much they say they understand that doesn't work for us I just don't see how they can understand this experience - this failure of mitochondria, or whatever it is - in order to help us maintain what is for us a healthy balance.
Somebody ought'a figure that out.
G'night,
Koan