A brief aside: A very dear friend of mine just told me that in his oral interpretation of literature class, Tales of MU was actually brought up as an example by the professor. It was brought up as an example of something that wouldn't be a good idea to read in front of a general audience, but since the topic at hand was feminist literature I'm counting this as a win.
(Anyway, I don't recommend MU for general audiences, myself.)
Okay, on to the post...
I feel a little odd talking about my health, when I've made so many posts about health care reform. I feel a little defensive (yes, I know... me? Defensive? I'm sure you can hardly imagine such a thing) and I want to point out that back when I was younger and less vincible and also had really good health coverage via big corporate employers I was a die hard in favor of nationalized/single payer health care. Now I'm for any plan that ensures affordable access and limits medical bankruptcies. I have friends who have been more directly and direly affected by the current system's flaws than I myself am even when going without health coverage, but I'm not thinking of them when I make my health reform rants. I don't have to think of a single person or a specific situation to summon that kind of passion for the subject. It's just that important.
All that said... this is a post about my health.
Last week was
Invisible Illness Awareness Week. I intended to make a post for it, but... I just couldn't summon up the energy. I kept meaning to, but it was over before I knew it.
As a child I was diagnosed with a form of mitochondrial myopathy. This is a serious condition, or many related conditions actually, some of which can be fatal or have life-altering complications.
Much testing was done on me, including two large muscle biopsies that left behind caterpillar-shaped scars on my thighs, and it was eventually concluded that mine wasn't fatal and didn't seem to be progressive and I proceeded with my childhood without giving it much more thought except as an explanation for why I couldn't manage certain physical tasks as well as others.
Penmanship is one area where I suffered. My fine motor control was not the best to begin with, and my hands get tired really easily. The more fatigued my muscles get, the more prone I am to twitching and spasms that make writing impossible. My parents made sure I learned how to type and got the school to accommodate me with a computer in the classroom... something that would probably be there anyway as a matter of course these days, but it was a bit of a headache then.
That sounds like a little thing. Penmanship. Who writes by hand these days anyway? It's sort of an illustrative example, though. Anything that involves muscles is going to give me problems, and what doesn't involve muscles? I tire easily. That's kind of an understatement. Anything more than mild exertion wipes me out. Mild exertion I can do just about forever. I can walk at a moderate pace for hours. When I'm in practice, I can walk distances that leave many "healthy" people shaking their heads.
More-than-mild exertion, though, wipes me out... and when I'm wiped out, I stay wiped out for longer than most people. I also become more prone to what I consider "misfires": random twitches and spasms and severe muscle cramps.
But of course, it isn't just muscles that are affected. Growing up I thought of my illness as a "muscle problem", but mitochondria aren't just found in muscles. They are "the powerhouse of the cells", and they're found wherever energy is used. Muscles. Organs. Brain. It's no wonder that mitochondria disorders are so often fatal, really... nothing functions without energy.
The brain is a big user of the body's energy reserves, of course. Trying to pretend it isn't affected is silly... and increasingly obviously counterproductive, the older I get. I'm generally brilliant. I know I am. That's empirically measurable, as far as those things go, and I can point to evidence. But my brain gets tired and it misfires just like everything else on me does.
Acknowledging this helps me come up with strategies for coping with it, but there are simply some realities that are unavoidable. One is what happens when I push myself too hard or too far. My recent trip to Disney World is a good example of that on the physical level. It's taken me about ten days to feel halfway normal again, physically. I enjoyed the trip a lot and I'm glad I went, but I don't think I could repeat the experience. I haven't even really had the energy to blog about the trip since getting back.
As for examples of me pushing myself too far mentally and its consequences... well, pretty much my whole life has been a study in that. It takes a lot to admit one's limitations.
While the slower, more measured approach to writing MU has had some very good results, I can't pretend it's the result of a deliberate decision. It's come from me struggling to keep going while my body and brain both feel like they're stretched to the breaking point.
However, again, acknowledging problems is the first step in solving them. When I went to the doctor... geez, I guess that was several months ago, now, part of the long-term wellness strategy we came up with included investigating dietary supplements that would help me cope with my physical issues without significantly altering my lifestyle or impacting me financially too much. My doctor had a few suggestions and I did a little research on my own, especially with finding groups of people who have the same issues.
It took me until this past weekend to actually get started on a regimen. I didn't expect to see a change right away, but it actually has been noticeable. What really surprised me is how much mental clarity and focus I've regained. It's like the experience of getting new glasses after your eyesight's degraded... it happens so gradually that you don't realize everything's gotten fuzzier, but as soon as you get the new prescription:
whoa. I've gone from feeling increasingly like I was swimming through cement to feeling like I'm waterskiing... over cement. Okay, the analogy falls down a little bit there.
Physically... well, I'm still adjusting things. The first two days I was taking a lot of energy boosting things at once, which left me crashing later. After I caught on to that I spread them out, but then I was taking some of them too late at night, well after my caffeine cut-off, and not getting the good restful sleep I've so recently become used to. Other than that, I feel better. The tiredness I've been experiencing the past few days is not the same deep-down muscle fatigue that's been dragging me down, it's just being tired.
Because of it I went to bed early last night (between 9 and 10), which means I woke up at a bit after 5 this morning... my melatonin sleep is always 7-8 hours and then I wake up like someone flipped a switch, which is nice.
We'll see how today goes, but I think I'm getting this thing ironed out.
Writing today, and probably more blog posts coming as I have many many things backlogged in my brain that I didn't have the wherewithal to shake out. As for stories, this might be another "one update a week" week, but it may be the last of those. There's big doings coming up in Tales of MU. Anybody who thinks the recent chapters were what I was talking about when I said the plot's going to be picking up a little is advised to please retain a firm grip on their hats and socks as both are in danger of being knocked off.
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