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Long covid and fatigue

Sleep that does not restore, plus a new sleep pattern

Started 20 June 2025 · 15 replies · 177 hearts · read 3.6k times

SolomonManchester, UK · 20 June 2025
about a year ago

Sleep that does not restore, plus a new sleep pattern Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Something is going on with my body and I would like to know whether it is ordinary.

This started at the same time as two other things, which is why I cannot attribute it to anything with any confidence.

Something is going on and I would like to know whether other people have had it, mostly so I know whether to raise it or wait it out.

Thank you for reading something this unglamorous. Any experience welcome, and timescales especially.

59

TobinCork, IE
#1

I went extremely slowly, agreed with my clinic, precisely because a crash would have cost me a fortnight rather than an afternoon.

9

SamPortland, OR
#2

My energy budget is a real budget with a real ceiling, and treating it that way rather than as a moral matter changed how I plan every week.

10

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#3

A standing thank-you to anybody who returns to a thread with the outcome. Threads that simply stop are the ones that leave the next person stranded, and one sentence months later prevents it.

23me too 1

HalCambridge, UK
#4

Kiki has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

Coming back at two years to say I am considerably better, that it was very slow, and that the slowness is the part I would keep.

9

TemSouthend, UK
#5

I had one crash early on that I traced to trying to do a normal week during a step up. I have never made that mistake twice.

8

PersisBristol, UK
#6

Tem said something I want to sit with for a second.

My clinic was cautious and involved, which I would recommend asking for. Doing this without them in the loop would have been much harder.

8me too 5

PeronelCanterbury, UK
#7

Building on what Persis wrote rather than answering the original question.

What I could not tell apart was medication fatigue and my usual fatigue. My notes eventually showed a pattern but it took four months to see.

11

HarriSwansea, UK
#8

No wisdom, just: I am sorry. That sounds genuinely hard.

10

HattieExeter, UK
#9

The hardest part was other people's timelines. Everything written about this assumes a body that recovers overnight and mine does not.

7

BodhiByron Bay, AU
#10

Harri said something I want to sit with for a second.

Heart rate as a pacing tool was more useful to me than how I felt, because how I felt was a lagging indicator by about a day.

10

NyalaAddis Ababa, ET
#11

What Bodhi described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

What worked was splitting everything into halves. Half a shop, half a walk, half an evening, and stopping at half even when it felt unnecessary.

11

MapleToronto, CA
#12

I want to say plainly that this has gone well for me, slowly, over two years, and that slowness was the ingredient rather than an obstacle.

13

AshSunderland, UK
#13

My worst weeks all followed a good week. That pattern was so consistent that I now treat a good week as a warning rather than a permission.

8

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#14

Stepping in because a question about another medication has come up. That is a pharmacist question and it is genuinely one they will answer properly and quickly.

28me too 3

BoazHaarlem, NL
#15

Thank you for the update. Threads that stop are the worst kind.

12