I do want to walk as much as you do. Imagine the feeling you get when something important to you is disappointing. You would avoid that disappointment, wouldn’t you? I know I can’t walk very far and every time I try, I am disappointed. I am disappointed because my body lets me down. I am not the capable person I want to be. I am either in horrible pain which comes with a peculiar kind of shutdown of my body, or I can’t breathe. I am completely breathless and struggling for breath. If my blood is burning with adrenalin, I can walk further. The consequences of that activity are not pleasant.
I am (as is my body, the real culprit) completely unreliable. My energy gets a budget, I savor it when I have it and am in bed when I don’t. Some days I wake up and I can’t function, yesterday, headache and nausea…when I do have energy and feel okay, I’m all in for any activity. I can’t schedule anything and we don’t have a normal schedule. We haven’t been able to pick a day for grocery shopping weekly because I am just that unreliable. One of my ideas is to design a few exercise that I can do quickly without planning so that I can keep up my activity level.
BTW, none of these things happened overnight. These things occur in peculiar ways as time goes on. It is not as if, one day I suddenly had very bad pain if I stood up. Now, when I am walking and I stop, the pain intensifies badly. It doesn’t matter what the good reason is for my walk, it will always end badly with me struggling to breathe and in awful pain.
Some days are really painful. I can limp around, but the price of activity is absolute, I will suffer. It’s not a condition that I can take a supplement or even a medication for. The rules are all internal and not subject to interpretation or approval. Post Exertional Malaise
PEM is a full stop. You cannot function anymore. I experienced it in the times when I refused to stop working. It’s an eclipse of energy. I must lie down and it is the worst experience, from the top of my head, throughout my body to my feet.
Effects of Exercise on Fibromyalgia patients are not good and that is well documented. COPD same. Yes, you must keep moving, but you do not belong in a gym competing with others.
Without the nagging of my loved ones, I don’t know if I would ever get exercise. But I do get exercise, not much, and it’s the best I can do.
At each moment, I am doing the best I possibly can. Unlike the guy next to me, I’m always trying.
What happened to me? I used to be the most energetic person I knew except when PMS took me down. Otherwise, wow! I was faster than anyone I knew.
It’s not age,
it’s my illness and it’s my ability to say no. The more I say yes to people’s needs the sicker I am. I’ll never be better, because the part of me that cannot change lingers here. This is the place where I want to take care of everyone. This is the place where “yes” lingers foolishly trying to control my life.
I want to say I’m learning to change my behavior. God knows I can be better. But it’s not happening. I am, without a doubt, without hesitation, doing the very best that I can. I promise.