Fatigue

For those of you that don't know about fatigue or understand it, it is horrible, it's one of the most common side effects after a stroke or brain injury due to many tiny sites of damage throughout the brain.  It's different to tiredness or normal fatigue, this type can literally drain all energy, dampen movement and sleep can do little to reduce it. I find it very difficult to sleep on a normal night when I'm not fatigued so when the fatigue hits me I have no hope of a good nights sleep as I've explained befroe. 

There are many different types, you can have fatigue where after a brain injury doing to much excessive work can make you fatigued or like myself it can come on within minutes and nothing you do can reduce it sometimes it's there for hours or other times it's there for days and if you try and do work while your fatigued it makes the process of recovering from fatigue even harder. I literally think that when most of my friends ask me to go out and I'm like no I can't I'm too exhausted  they think I use it as an excuse, I wouldn't blame them if they get frustrated cause I do say it a lot, but I assure you if you are reading this I am not, I can not decide which days are going to be good days, I wish I could but I can't so when I get a good day I am the type of person that tries to fit as much in as possible so I wont have to worry when I am having a bad day and can't do anything but act like a spud that has blended into the sofa. 

I try and be like a normal 19 year old or try and be like my friends and do so much day after day that my body has no choice to force itself to be in pain cause it's the only way I'll rest, I admit, compared to the beginning I realise how important rest is and I've come to accept I can't do as much as most people my age all at once. But I think that's the struggle, is that you are so young and you want to do all these things and experiences but your forced to choose responsibly and not to be carefree and it annoys you when people tell you to slow down, but you don't really listen and do everything anyway and realise how right everyone was when you are over exhausted and in pain. But I guess that's what makes having a brain injury and dealing with its effects a little harder than those who are a little older than us younger ones, cause we are just trying to find ourselves, our identity our place in the world and we're faced with this illness or diability which makes us different and makes things harder for us, makes it harder for us to realize the right decisons we make and how it can make finding ourselves harder cause we are forced to find the 'new' us and undertsand the 'old' us together. It can take us a little longer to realize what the right decision is and once we've made it, it's too late for those we have hurt.

I hope you all had a great weekend, I hope you all have a great week. 💜😊