Running on empty
The fact it has taken me over 3 weeks to get around to writing this, speaks volumes about the affect fatigue has on my ability to ‘achieve’ goals post stroke.
After some extensive rehab, and regular sessions at the gym to help me get fitter my focus is pretty much entirely on the return to work. But, as many would have experienced, my post stroke life is afflicted by insomnia. Given that the effort required for me to just complete every day tasks, doing so on no sleep is really quite difficult.
This effects my return to work because sometimes I am so tired after another night of no sleep that my only thought as I get ready for work is “well I think I will just have to resign as this is too hard”. But I haven’t. And I don’t plan to. Why?
- Self fulfilling prophecy: I know that the “betterer” I get, the more I do and the more work I can withstand then the more I do and the more tired I become etc etc.
- Quest for ‘normal’: I suspect that my memory is a bit ‘rose coloured’ but I really quite enjoyed my working life prior to my stroke. The relative normalcy of getting up for work each weekday, balancing my family and social life with work commitments and striving to succeed and ‘climb the corporate ladder’ are all things I want to get back to doing
- Confidence: If I am not confident that I can achieve the goal of regular working then I would just give up wouldn’t I?
- Practice makes perfect: Like learning to talk again, eat again, and walk again all of these got easier the more I do it. I still recall the speech therapists telling me that the best thing I can do to continue to improve my speech is to read lots of books to my daughter – which she is quite happy about! But the repetition and practice has meant that, for all intents and purposes, I sound like my speech has not really been affected. I have no reason to believe that the same wont happen to me when it comes to working and dealing with fatigue.
Being a bit of a maths and stats nerd, I have thought about this fatigue and work ‘equation’ and came up with the following:
Amount of energy required to complete normal ‘daily’ tasks +
Amount of energy required to go to work +
Amount of energy needed to ‘keep up’ with my 4-year-old daughter
> Amount of energy my body has after my stroke
My goal is to make this equation invalid.