Tag Archives: fatigue

Undecided and Unfocused

Well, here I am on Sunday evening, and I really don’t know what happened. It’s been almost two weeks since I worked on Sky. And, as is obvious to regular readers of this blog, I’ve also fallen off the wagon of doing five posts per week no matter what!!!!

Part of that was Introvert’s Fatigue, as I’m calling it. Doing a lot of things, absorbing a lot of information, consciously or unconsciously, and then needing not only to rest but to process. I wonder, often, if this is getting worse as I age, or if there’s simply more information to process. Or if there’s simply more to do than I think. Kind of along the lines of that problem I have with the space-time continuum.

Because when I come home after a trip, it’s not to this peaceful, sublime place where I can rest for a few days and then move gently and gracefully back into my routine.

No, the routine is in shambles, I have doubled loads of laundry to get done, the plants need tending to, the house is a mess from all the packing to leave and unpacking upon return. Sheets need washing, towels need washing, floors swept, carpet vacuumed, groceries to be bought… Blog posts “need” to be written, photos uploaded, selected, edited for the posts, the mess leftover from The Big Project needs to be dealt with…

And in the midst of all that I’m wandering around like… well… I hate to use this analogy, but I’m rather like Quigley in a target rich environment of different smells. I’ve succumbed repeatedly to the tendency I’ve described before where I go into another room to get something, see something new in the new room, forget entirely what I was doing in the old room, and start doing the new something, pull boxes off shelves, partially pull out the contents, move into another room to get something else, forget what I was doing in room two and go outside to hang out the laundry, return to deal with some of the paperwork on the table, then suddenly decide to go read blogs… that’s been really bad last week, what with the debate.

[Which I actually managed to watch in entirety —  except for the times I had to walk out of the room because I got so agitated….(“Calm down, Karen. Now go back in there and sit down and listen quietly. It’s okay…”)]

In addition to all that, or maybe in the middle of it, when I actually TRY to decide what to do, I can’t, because a flood of “you shoulds” and  “you musts” and “don’t forget about thats” and “you needs” engulfs my brain, and I don’t know which to pick. So then I go read blogs…

Why is that the default I wonder? Why is it easy to “not-decide” to read blogs? By which I mean, I don’t sit there and evaluate everything and consciously decide, it’s more like I get the sudden desire to read them and I act on it. Whereas everything else is a big …“I don’t know. Should I clean the bathroom? What about washing the kitchen floor? Maybe I should do tricks with Quig but I don’t want to. I should get started on my Christmas cards and…”

And then somehow I find myself sitting in front of the computer reading Drudge for “just a minute,” again. It’s like I was enspelled…

Or maybe I was just tired.

Follow Up Appointment

Well, today I went for my ten-day follow-up appointment after the surgery. The doctor took off my waterproof bandages and removed a stitch or two, said all was healing up nicely.

In fact, he was surprised by how well I was doing.

He said that every day he sees multiple women who’ve had this same surgery — and I am way ahead of the curve in terms of recovery.  He was concerned though, that feeling as good as I do, I might easily overdo, and warned me to move slowly. Still… when I asked him what vacuuming might do to me (I slipped up and did it this morning… just couldn’t stand the crumbles of dog biscuit on the living room floor any more) he said I wouldn’t be doing any internal damage to the surgery healing, just that I might hurt my back.

Really? Hmm. I’ve had to watch out for my back for years, so maybe I can do a little more vacuuming after all.

So, clearly that is good news, as is the fact that the final pathology report showed no cancer. I just had the “complex hyperplasia with atypia” which is the fancy way of saying “pre-cancerous. Yay!  More answered prayers, so thank you all for lifting me up before our Father. 🙂

The main thing I’ve been noticing is that I seem to get REALLY tired… Of course, I’ve had a lot going in the last week: friends over for an afternoon, a day of driving across town to have lunch with my editor — a magical wonderful day, but when I got home I was totally blitzed. Even fell asleep in the middle of Bible Class which I almost never do.

Friday we attended a friends’ defense of her Master’s Thesis, and out to dinner afterward. Another amazing day… and when I got home… completely wiped out.

So today, with the doctor’s admonitions ringing in my ears, I wondered if this exceptional tiredness might be because of the surgery. So I just now looked it up and bingo!  From eHow’s “ What to Expect After a Hysterectomy“:

“You should expect to have a lower level of energy than you normally have. You may feel this way for up to two weeks.”

Well, I’ve got one week down, so maybe only one to go. We’ve been watching a lot of The Mentalist. 🙂

So that’s my first follow-up appointment report. I’m hoping to get back to work on Sky tomorrow.