The fortnight I lost and what I learned

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

Grateful you posted rather than kept it to yourself.

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.

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.

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.

This is why I read the boring weeks. Thank you for the boring weeks.

The advice to exercise gently is complicated for us and I would say be very careful with it. Mine went badly and my clinic explained why afterwards.

Here, reading, and glad you posted.

I had to accept a smaller week. Not permanently, as it turns out, but for about a year, and the accepting was harder than the smaller week.

Somebody in this circle described a good day as a loan rather than a gift, and I have quoted that to about nine people since.

My clinic asked me to change one thing at a time with four weeks between changes, which felt glacial and was completely correct.

The thing I underestimated was cognitive fatigue as distinct from physical. A demanding hour of thinking cost me the same as a walk.

Temperature regulation was a thing for me that nobody had mentioned. Warmth helped considerably and it took me a year to work that out.