Something's wrong with me. My energy plummeted last week, I nearly passed out on Sunday afternoon, and since yesterday I've been having various twinging pains and gastrointestinal symptoms. I felt so weak and woozy that I went home from work early yesterday, and took today completely off.
The obvious question--and one I've been asked a few times already this go-round--is "what's wrong?" Is it a virus? Some sort of new cluster of symptoms? A medication reaction? I'm finding the question irritatingly irrelevant these days.
I do, of course, understand that there's some useful information to be had from locating the source of my current distress. It would be good to know whether I'm contagious, as well as whether I should seek additional medical attention. I'd be better equipped to decide whether I should stay home tomorrow if I knew if this happened to be the 'flu (which tends to respond to additional rest) or just a new manifestation of the fatigue (which, alas, does not). I realize these are all important decisions I should make in some sort of informed way. I just can't bring myself to care.
The problem, I think, is that finding the answer doesn't really have any bearing on projecting my future level of health. It's not as if I feel healthy on a regular basis; I see my future health as a wavery line, the undulations of which are largely out of my control, whether or not these particular symptoms represent an acute illness. I'm uncomfortably aware that this sounds like a defeatist attitude under the current circumstances--and perhaps it is--but accepting the unpredictability of my symptoms has also been a major factor in achieving some level of calm as I muddle through my life.
I've been trying very hard not to let dealing with chronic illness make me bitter. Tonight I'm not doing so well with that, but I'm neither depressed nor unrealistically hopeful--and I'm about to head back to bed and get some more extra sleep, which is a good thing either way.
