The Reminder

That life-sucking heaviness. The feverishness without fever. The semi-delirium. They all came back yesterday in force. The dishes piled up and there was nothing I could do about it. I struggled to boil pasta for dinner. I was back in 2010.

And the memories came back. I remember standing in line in the post office on Sutter Street in 2010. (I no longer remember why I was there, perhaps I was shipping my photo albums to somebody because I was leaving for Korea.) The fatigue was so overwhelming, I couldn't care less what people thought and wanted to drop right there and lie down on the floor. Or, on the subway in Korea desperately wishing that someone would get up so that I could sit. When we were back, I would send my wife to scout for the bus stop because I couldn't walk another block. It's a wonder how I survived that delirium for so long.

There was nothing unusual I did the day before. I walked a few blocks, ran some errands and ended up logging 7000 steps. In the evening, I revved up for no reason, enough to go out to the grocery store at 10PM to pick up milk and pie. It's something I wouldn't do normally; timidity and melancholy to go with fatigue set in by then even on a good day. A lot of people was out for the start of the weekend. A reminder of things I missed out for the past 10 years.

I took 17000 steps climbing Mist Trail in Yosemite less than a month ago and I survived it without getting sick -- I only paid with some post-exertional struggle. No reason for the 7000 steps to cause such heavy crash. It probably was the result of the surge in the evening before. It's something that I've seen several times before, that I've been calling "post-high crash". It's as if the CFS switch gets turned off in the evening for whatever reason and then snap back on the next morning with full force.

Luckily, the sickness lasted only one day. And that was a good thing in more than one way. When I'm well, I forget what it really was like; I only remember that I struggled. So the occasional reminders of what it was like is a good thing. That let you stay compassionate to severely ill patients who have to struggle with the CFS delirium day in and day out.