It began a year ago. One test lead to a biopsy, which in turn led to 3 months of waiting. Waiting to see if my body would “take care of it.” I ate healthy, exercised, didn’t drink or smoke, so the doctor blamed stress. I turned my life upside down in the quest for stress-free living.
Another biopsy. A surgery.
Fatigue, bone-wearying fatigue, the kind where you barely make it work every day and want nothing but sleep.
A test. Another biopsy, followed by a two-week lapse into the border on despair.
A visit to an internal specialist, a work-up, a second opinion, allergy testing. A surprise ending from the second opinion – there’s nothing to worry about, the first doctor’s approach was aggressive and had severely overtreated me.
Just like that. Release. A clean bill of health.
The soul-tired feeling fell away within a few days… it took some time to sink in, but once it did my heart felt so light. Finally, finally my shoulders relaxed. I think they had been hunched for months, the constant companion of sad and tired eyes.
The actual tired feeling, it turns out, is the result of chronic untreated allergies. I am allergic to dust mites, mold, cat hair, trees, soy and wheat. I started medication immediately.
It’s only been a day, but already the constant fog has lifted. I have energy. Energy I wondered if I would ever have again – energy to blog, to read, to talk, to do laundry – even after a full day of work.
I have energy.
It’s true that you don’t know how valuable things are until they are gone. The nights I would cry out of frustration and exhaustion were more and more frequent. I had, ironically, spent a year trying to figure out how to not pack my schedule, only to find somewhere in the middle that I couldn’t do what I had been used to doing even if I wanted to.
But now it’s back. I have energy.
And I get to start again. I can start from here.
Photo credit: basegreen via Flickr.