A fortnight of flatness that was actually a virus

Started 21 October 2024 · 19 replies · 220 hearts · read 2.3k times

RillaAberdeen, UK · 21 October 2024

1.7 years ago

A fortnight of flatness that was actually a virus Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Before anyone says it: yes, I have an appointment booked. I would still like to hear from people who have had this.

My pharmacist has been helpful and my question has now outgrown what she can answer at a counter, so I am asking here while I wait for an appointment.

I have written down when it happens and how long it lasts, because I could not answer either of those questions when my GP asked and I felt foolish.

I will come back and say what my appointment produced, because I hate reading threads that stop before the answer.

KezWigan, UK

Mine correlated with hydration far more than I would have believed. Very dull, very consistent across three months of notes.

MarenBremen, DE

I found the tiredness hardest to explain to other people. It is not the tiredness of a bad night, it is a different quality, and there is no good vocabulary for it.

TychoLeiden, NL

Naps helped me and made things worse for somebody I talk to weekly, so I am reluctant to recommend them. Worth trying and worth abandoning.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

Two things. First, nobody here can tell you what is happening in your body. Second, the conversation you want to have is with a clinician, and we can help you write down what to say.

NorahDerry, NI

The exhaustion is real and it is not laziness, and I spent a month calling it laziness before somebody here corrected me kindly.

GildaTrieste, IT

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

My honest experience: my sleep is now noticeably better than it was before any of this, which was not something I expected or was aiming for.

13me too 1

SunnivaBodø, NO

Gently disagreeing with Kiki, or rather adding the other half of it.

What I found was that eating something earlier in the evening changed my nights more than anything I did about sleep directly.

NettieBarrow, UK

I was waking at three or four, wide awake, for about six weeks. It stopped as suddenly as it started and I never worked out why.

NilsUppsala, SE

Coming back to what Gilda wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

Light in the morning was the thing that helped most and cost nothing. Twenty minutes outside before nine, most days, and my nights changed within a fortnight.

AshSunderland, UK

#10

The bit I underestimated was how much the fatigue affected my mood, and how much I then attributed to my mood that was actually just being tired.

NoahHull, UK

#11

I would say do not soldier on with this silently for months. I did five months and my GP's first response was to ask why I had not come sooner.

BassCoventry, UK

#12

Mine was worst in winter and much better in summer, and I now think a good half of it was seasonal and would have happened anyway.

HuwWrexham, UK

#13

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

I was tired for about eight weeks and then I was not. I have no explanation. I offer it as data because the eight-week accounts are what I needed at week three.

11me too 1

GigiNaples, IT

#14

Mine improved when I fixed something completely unrelated, which had been quietly wrecking my nights for a year. Worth casting a wide net.

OssianTromsø, NO

#15

What worked was accepting that I had less in the day than I used to, temporarily, and taking things out of the week rather than trying to do them tired.

OrrinGlasgow, UK

#16

Gently disagreeing with Gigi, or rather adding the other half of it.

The vivid dreams caught me completely off guard. Nobody had mentioned them and about a third of this circle seems to have had them.

SinéadCork, IE

#17

My prescriber asked about my sleep before anything else when I raised fatigue, which I thought was a diversion and turned out to be the whole answer.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

#18

Slowing this down for a moment. The question asked was whether this is ordinary. That is not the same as asking what to do about it and we have answered the second one.

27me too 6

LeifTrondheim, NO

#19

The four o'clock waking was the thing I could not solve. I have found nothing that fixes it and I have found it helps to know I am not the only one.

11me too 5