Spoons

-->I originally wrote this entry on May 1, 2012. That was before I started this blog, and as mentioned in my first post, it was written in the notes app on my iPhone. This post is more easily understood if you are familiar with 'Spoon Theory'. Spoon Theory is not actually a theory, rather it is a story that helps healthy people to understand the situation of a person with a chronic illness a little better. I am not chronically ill, but I identified with that situation before I figured out that gluten was causing my degrading health (and somewhat still identify with it while I'm healing). You can read the Spoon Theory story here: Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino.

      This is not normal. I live in Florida, I'm young, it's 78°F in my house, and I'm fully overdressed and under a cozy blanket and a comforter. No, I don't have a fever. I think I ran out of spoons. I thought, since last week I went back to a gluten free diet, that I could go back to my normal workout schedule. I had gotten sicker and sicker during my 6 weeks of eating gluten for my medical tests, and had to drop off activities one by one. I was highly optimistic that I would quickly recover and be back to normal in no time. I enthusiastically did a workout on Sunday, and then another one on Monday.

     This morning (Tuesday), when running up the stairs to get a shirt for my daughter, my leg muscles said “no”. They were exhausted and I had to walk the last few steps. I decided I didn't have the energy to take my daughter to school by bicycle, so I drove to the park next to the school and walked her there. Walking back to my car was exhausting. It was not far, only about a block worth of distance to cross the school building and the edge of the lake to my car. I felt like I might collapse. Thankfully I made it back home with no such embarrassing incident occurring.

     I managed to make breakfast for myself (a green smoothie and an egg). I know the ice cold smoothies make me feel cold, but I typically recover after about 15 minutes. This time I didn't. Twenty minutes later I was still shivering. I added a sweatshirt to my attire, but it wasn't enough. I crawled upstairs to my bed. First, I put my soft blanket over my body, then pulled my comforter over my body, too. That was a little better. I was still shivering a little, but it slowly got better. Now, over an hour later, I am finally feeling comfortable. I spent all that time shivering in a curled up ball under the blankets.

     Of course this upsets me. I think of myself as tough and physically fit. But here I am, weak, sickly, tired. How can I admit this to anyone? I have trouble even admitting this to myself. This shouldn't be me. All I can hope is that my gut will eventually heal from the damage eating gluten has caused me, and that my body will start to absorb nutrients better. Probably one of the biggest contributors to my scant energy levels (and previously unmentioned hair loss issues) is my low ferritin. I strongly believe the damage from gluten has caused my ferritin to end up low. I really hope I can fix it.

For the record... it was about 2 hours before I actually started to feel too warm under all of those blankets and could resume my normal activities, minus martial arts practice. It's been just over one month since that incident, and thankfully that was my worst 'shivering with cold' episode. It's all slowly getting better.

:)