Sick and tired of being sick and tired

I've been absent due to tiredness. 

What kind of excuse is that? I hear you mutter, perhaps followed by more mutterings about how tired you've been but you've still gone to work, done the chores, looked after the kids, etc. If so then I sympathise, I've been a working mother myself so I understand your tiredness. However with all due respect unless you're a fibromite or have CFS/ ME or both then I really doubt you understand this tiredness of mine.

Listen, I'll come straight to the point here, imagine you've run up a treacle clad mountain, with a sack of coal on your back and carrying another sack of coal in each hand, while someone repeatedly hits your bones with a hammer and another keeps trying to prise your joints apart with a red hot tyre lever. Not to forget your brain being filled up with thick fog until you can hardly remember your name never mind anything else, plus your head pounded until it feels like it's going to burst, and the half kilo weights that have been sewn onto your eyelids, add to that the breathlessness, pain, and sheer exhaustion that makes even yawning difficult to do.

Until you've experienced that please don't try to tell me you know how I feel. Keep your advice to yourself; do you really think I've not tried everything to stop this? 

Giving up naps in the day, while it may help you with your normal tiredness, doesn't help me at all, in fact it makes things worse. Eating this and that energy giving food doesn't help much either. My gut isn't working properly, it too is exhausted and can't digest in the normal manner. Oh yes, in the beginning when I didn't understand fibro and CFS I did my damndest to overcome this horrible, life altering condition but as I became more knowledgeable, more experienced I soon realised that fighting it only made it stick around longer.

Be told and understand that I'm not idle, lazy, couch potato or bed loving. Nor is it all in my mind and imagined. I'm certainly not exaggerating.  

You tell me I should be thinking positively, come closer to say that and I'll show you a positive punch, well I would if I had the energy.

So here's what to do. Smile at me, wish me well, ask if there's anything you could help with like going to the loo, bring me a cup of tea even. Then just go away and let me get on with getting on through this latest episode.

Don't preach, don't try to jolly me along, don't even sit down and start a conversation because it'll be a one sided affair and you'll get a sore throat from talking too much. Just go away and leave me alone. I'll do what I can, maybe even manage the washing up if possible a task that needs no brain power and very little energy expenditure. Seriously, if I can manage a chore I will do so because there's nothing I like better than to be doing something, but that doesn't mean I'm ok. Doesn't mean I'm up to going shopping. It just means there's a little lull in the tsunami of exhaustion and I'm taking advantage of it.

So now you know what to do, say, how to act with me, can we please stop the remarks, and help and advice. Above all, stop thinking you know how I feel because I'm sure you don't. Unless you're a sufferer too.