The days are getting shorter in the Northern Hemisphere and this time of year always makes me sleepy. But a recent post on Facebook by a husband and wife account detailing her battle with Stage Four breast cancer got me thinking…
You see, a few years ago at the tail end of my time in San Antonio, I suffered from fatigue. And not just the run-of-the-mill, gee-I’ve-been-pretty-tired-lately; but the soul-crushing, tears-inducing type of fatigue. The kind that made me stand in the shower for ten extra minutes trying to get the energy to turn off the water and start my day. The kind that made me sit in my car at the end of the day and will myself to find the energy to put in the clutch of my car so I could drive home. The kind that made me cancel plans that I had really been looking forward to time and time again. The kind that, frankly, made me a shadow of myself.
I thought it was my thyroid, a vitamin deficiency, iron imbalance, overly stressful job environment, my marriage issues, whatever. But never did I think it was anything else. In fact, up until I read my friends’ post about her breast cancer journey a few days ago did I even make the connection that my fatigue (that sounds so innocuous for what was really so severe) might have been related to my melanoma. She had also suffered from extreme fatigue, sounding suspiciously like what I dealt with. She attributed it to her immune system spending all of her body’s resources to fight against the cancer invading her body. It made me wonder if that might have been a cause, if not the cause, of why I was so damn lethargic for months. Even after I upped the vitamins and ate healthy and tried to get consistent exercise, I was still so bone-dead tired that getting up in the morning was a battle. Ironically, after I moved to Austin, I felt better, more energetic. But that was right when my pink spot popped up. Did my body’s immune system finally say, “OK uncle…you can have the right knee, but can we please have the rest go back to normal”? My friend also reported feeling better for a little while, until they found the cancer had returned…and spread. (She’s on a non-traditional treatment plan that isn’t based on chemo and radiation. So far, she seems to be responding well and her husband is reporting that it doesn’t seem like the cancer is progressing. I’m very hopeful that she has found a way through this and can not only beat the prognosis but exceed the doctor’s expectations and thrive.)
So, while fatigue is sometimes just the daylight changes, or a response to stress or run-of-the-mill illness, sometimes fatigue can be a symptom of a much larger problem. If someone in your life can barely get out of bed and drags themselves through life for months, don’t belittle them about getting old, or not eating right, or not getting enough exercise – instead, urge them to go to a doctor. Go get blood tests, go get a skin exam, go get looked at to try to find the root cause. Fatigue like that isn’t normal, and it could be the sign that something is working your immune system so hard that there’s barely anything left in the tank to keep up with normal life.