A Little Bit of a Different Blog Post

Hi Everyone, as the title to this post suggests, this post is going to be a little bit different, and a little bit more personal than the slightly more fluffy (but admittedly lovely) little world of beauty and make up. As I have mentioned in a post before I got glandular fever (also known as mono, or mononucleosis to any non-Brits out there) in January, and have been suffering from the after effects of it ever since. From what I understand, this seems to affect different people, well differently; some seem to have glandular fever, but have a bit of flu symptoms, and are back up and running within a couple of weeks. However, now I have a greater awareness of it, it seems that the world and his wife has had it, and it has caused massive problems...i'm now forever hearing about sports personalities who have been properly put out of action by the dreaded mono...along with a bloke who lives down my street who said it took him 18 months to get over. In my case, apart from the nasty flu symptoms, and one particularly scary day when I was convinced that my throat was actually closing up, and was struggling to breathe, my main problem was the rash I got from incorrectly prescribed anti-biotics. This manifested in a particularly attractive manner where my face got so red and swollen, that my face actually started going purple....followed by my entire body being covered by said rash....hot I was not....apart from actually physically hot of course...the heat coming off my skin was enough to heat a family home all of it's own accord....I swear, boy scouts could have toasted their marshmallows off me (although that wouldn't have been terribly hygienic, and I would have scared the poor boys with my beetroot head, and put them off women for life) This excruciating rash (so hot and painful it was actually uncomfortable to wear clothes) lasted for about two weeks...then I moved onto the next delightful stage where I was sleeping for about 20 hours a day. Slowly (very slowly) and with the help of some pills, I managed to get my sleep patterns back to being (mostly) awake during the day. I think my family were probably quite pleased that the falling asleep randomly stopped....seriously....mid conversation sometimes, i'd be chatting away, then next second whoever I conversing with would look back and i'd be properly and soundly asleep, also mid-task....most frequently while eating, yes like overtired toddlers do! After the initial comedy value of this, i'm sure that got quite annoying for the people around me. Falling asleep on the bathroom floor at work was probably was a low point. This was actually after fainting first, so suffice to say, I caused a bit of drama in the office that particular day.
Anyway, it's 7 months down the road and i'm still not better. I've seen a consultant and i've been provisionally diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME, although several doctor friends of mine have said that it's perfectly possible that my symptoms are just from the glandular fever. We shall see. Best prognosis, I may feel a world of difference this time next year, or I could be like this or something like this for the rest of my life...I may need to adapt and reconsider a few things but trying my best to stay positive, making the best of things that I can...things could be much worse right?
Basically, I have to be super careful about what I do, everything, and I mean everything I do, consumes my energy, and I have a seriously limited supply. Case in point...a couple weekends back, one of my best friends from my university days was having a flat-warming party. My dad very kindly drove me into London to her new flat (what? I'm spoiled!) I spent approximately 3-4 hours there, felt I was going to fall asleep, left, 10 minute walk to the station, 10 minute tube ride to mainline train station, 20 minute train ride home (I was sitting for all the train journies) and my lovely papa picked me up from the train station. I was home by about 7pm, and slept for the rest of the evening. That little escapade put me in bed for two days. Sucks right? I would not have thought twice about doing 5 times that amount of activity in a day before as per most 28 year olds I suspect! Anyway, i'm taking baby steps...gradually building up my activity, and basically putting most if not all social activity on ice until i'm a bit stronger. Just getting out of the house and spending (part-time hours to start) a day at work is enough at the moment. What I feel pretty much every day is an all encompassing tiredness that gets progressively worse throughout the day, and I feel constantly achy and heavy. I really think there should be better adjectives than tired and achy though to be honest, as this is probably why people look at me like i'm making it up...trouble is, I don't look like i'm sufferening, apart from a little tired sometimes, I look like i'm ok...apart from the fact i've lost weight since this whole thing started. I'll try and explain the "achy" if I can... imagine how you feel when you're coming down with a bad cold/flu, when you feel achy all over, leaden and it basically hurts to move, and then think about if you've had a really intense exercise class, or run 5k or something similar, and then how crap and painful/achy you feel the day after. Combine the two, multiply it by about two or three, and that's about how I feel most days....and those are the good days. It's difficult to explain when it's a effort to do anything, and even if you're feeling quite good, and try and do a little more than you should (i'm talking moving a couple of boxes for an example) that you might knock youself out for the rest of the day, or the following couple days...and not be able to get out of bed/sleep almost constantly. My life is a balance of me working out what I think I can do, then actually doing significantly less than what I think I can do....if I stick to that, I can just about muddle through!

Anyways....congratulations if you've made it this far in the epic blog post, thank you for sticking with me this far! This has been a very long way of explaining why i've been so rubbish at updating this blog. I'm sorry guys! I'll try my best to be a bit better in the future. The good things about some of my main loves in this world, is that they are quite sedentary activities....namely reading all my lovely books, and playing with lots of pretty make up. Is just difficult to find the energy to blog about these things sometimes. But as I said before, i'm seriously restricting my foray out into the actual world at the moment....so maybe I'll increase my time in this little virtual world!
I'm continuling to do research to see if there is anyway I can help myself, on my little road to hopefully feeling normal again. I'm interested, if you've stuck with me to the end of this post, have you ever suffered from glandular fever/mono? If so what was your experience? and did you find anything to help yourself? Or do you know anyone who has any helpful thoughts or tips?
Thank you one and all for reading! Hope I haven't bored you all too much. I hope that you're all well!
Em xx