Dog tired

It’s been a few weeks since my last post. All is well with the girls now that they have all gotten over chicken pox. We had a few night’s of broken sleep, Stacey more than me as I’m least likely to wake up. Which is the subject of this post. I am tired all the time.

I have busy days. I get up early, before the girls so I can meditate and have a quiet cup of coffee. I work in the mornings and nap when I get home. Then I pick the girls up from school, cook dinner and do the bath routine. And just lately I’ve been falling asleep around 8pm. And it’s not just the girls and work tiring me out. It’s mostly exhaustion from pain, which lately has been flaring up quite badly in my back and my face. It seems the minute I sit down I doze off.

I’m exhausted right now. Central pain syndrome is kicking my ass. Pain takes up a lot of my attention, it drags me down and tires me out. I feel every movement which draines me mentally as well as physically. I’m getting on with my days the best I can but lately it’s wiping me out.

The anticonvulsant medication I take can also make me tired but usually I make it to at least half ten before I’m struggling to keep my lids open. It’s also affecting my relationship with Stacey as the evening is our only real time together. All I want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep. Which is pretty much what I am doing right now when I have done my daily jobs.

Before I developed central pain syndrome I had no problem running on 7 hours shut eye. I was bursting with energy and rarely sat still. I was always doing something. But with chronic pain all that has changed. I have become slow and sluggish. I still keep myself busy during the day but it takes it out of me, especially during flare ups.

In the pain clinic we talked about the spoon analogy. Say you have 12 spoons in a cup. Each spoon represents an energy level. And as you go through the day you remove spoons. For example i would remove 6 spoons from working. You continue to remove spoons as the day goes on. And here’s the problem. Once you have removed all the spoons, if you continue to burn up energy you are using spoons from the following day. So you may start the next day with only 9 spoons in your cup. And that’s how chronic pain works. Once it draines you – it draines you. You don’t reset after a night’s sleep.

I’m sure when my pain levels lower my energy levels will regulate again. But until then tiredness will continue to beat me down. I’m feeling sleepy writing this post so I’m going for a quick nap before I start work and I begin using up my spoons.