A Day With M.E..

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the real life Hannah Montana? I live two extremely different lives on a weekly basis, one minute I've got bundles of energy and the next, I'm thrown down on the couch lifeless.   So as you can tell the only difference between me and Hannah Montana is that I don't have "the best of both worlds".  Over the past 2-3 weeks,its been brought to my attention that there are a number of you, who are specifically following me for updates on my journey with M.E. , As some of you have been writing to me to ask a variety of questions in regards to M.E. I'm aware that I've been slightly off topic with my last few blog posts , as I've talked about all things beauty right down to my fave products, so for those of you who have been keeping an eye out for an M.E update you'll be glad to know that I'm finally back on track.  This week I'm going to fill you in on how I'm getting on since the first time I opened up to you all about my journey so far.

As I said in my previous post "living with M.E"  -  M.E symptoms can vary from day to day . You can have some extremely good days and also some pretty bad days.   Unfortunately, I am having quite a rough time lately.  I've had a different symptom every day of the week which can be extremely annoying as you begin to feel insane.   You  wonder how it's even possible to get pains in some of the places you do,  but unfortunately that's the joys of M.E. In this post, I've decided that I would fill you in on how I struggle with some of the main symptoms in which effect me the most on a daily basis and as I've said a new day brings a new symptom so I'll start with the basics for today and each week I will update you all if I notice a new symptom.

Sleep.
 The main thing I've noticed lately is that my sleeping pattern is all over the place which is a major nuisance as I'm like a bag of cats, I've been extremely fatigued 24/7 so I've been sleeping quite a lot during the day.  As you can imagine as a result of so much sleep during the day I'm getting broken nights sleep which then means that I wake up tired and this effects me for the following day.   As we're back to the beginning again with napping throughout the day,so basically sleep wise M.E is one big vicious circle.

Headaches
I can't even explain what kind of pain I get from the headaches that I've been getting.  It's like little shooting pains running down the side of my head which can be quite embarrassing if out in public as I tend to shout "ahh" every time it happens.  It's not the nicest feeling in the world.  This is one of the reasons that I've been quite slow in getting this post up on my blog as my head throbs when looking at the screen for quite a long time, so I do apologize but I did warn you all that I'm not the best patient didn't I? .

Sensitivity.
For some strange reason the past month is my first time expierncing sensitivity within the four years that I've been diagnosed.  I am gone extremely sensitive to smells, to an extent that I tend to get completley caught up.   I literally cannot stand certain smells, so I have to be careful with the likes of deodorant's, shower gels and perfumes, basically anything that is going to last for a couple of hours.  Thankfully, I only suffer with sensitivity to smells as sensitivity or intolerance to light  and loud noise are listed amongst the list of symptons that are common for patients with M.E so I'm not going to complain as luckily I've only developed sensitivity to just 1 out of 3.

Weakness.
Any of you who may have been in school with me will understand this one.   I'm an extremely clumsy person in general, ,but along with the help of my lovely weak muscles and joints I have now gone to the new level of clumsiness.  The main places where I have muscle/joint weakness is  my wrists,elbows and ankles.  For example, I could be walking a short distance minding my own buisness and the next minute my ankle would decide to give in and I would just plop on the floor,  not embarrising at all eh? As you can imagine each time this happens it results in me turning a fab shade of red and days of swollen cankles.

Digestion.
Over the past few months I've noticed my digestive system has gone cuckoo. Before I bore you, if I haven't already, I'm going to finish on this last symptom as it's the one I'm having most trouble with lately. Patients with M.E often have intermittent or persistent gut problems including indigestion, swelling of the gut and irritable bowel syndrome.  I've mentioned before in my post "Saturday night socialising" that I am one of the fussiest people ever when it comes to food, so this just makes it even 10 times worse as I have to be extremely careful about what I eat as more than likely I will  end up getting a pain in my tummy or else I will have uncontrollable burping/ heartburn and I will form a food baby. It's the one symptom that I literally can't  stand. I really think there's nothing worse than your tummy feeling uncomfortable, so I have just started a course of medication from my Doctor to see if  it will do anything for the problem I'm having with  my stomach/ digestive system, so I will keep you updated to let know if it does the job or not.

There you have it.   That's "A day with M.E", of course I always have some sort of ache or pain but I don't want any of you to think that this is what happens every single day of my life because its' not, well not to this extent every single day symptoms comes and go on a daily basis.  I've written this post based on my bad days but as I've said previously ,it's all about accepting what is, and dealing with it.
Feel free to ask me any questions I'd be glad to help you out.
That's all for now.Until Next Time.

Much Love,
Caoimhe X