I want to preface this by saying I have no formal diagnosis for chronic fatigue or pain. I've never posted here before but I'm having a difficult time in a transition period in my life finding more concrete advice to help me. People with chronic illnesses are the ones I think would most understand me right now, but I don't want to be offensive or out of line in thinking our issues might be similar. Please let me know if this is an inappropriate place to post this.
I have long dealt with anxiety and depression, and every therapist I've been to has cited my sleep issues as a symptom of the depression. I have a hard time falling asleep, I wake up dozens of times a night, I toss and turn, and I have to stay in bed for almost 11 hours to feel even slightly rested. I have headaches all the time no matter how much water I drink, I'm constantly tired, it feels like a struggle to do anything outside of the energy I put out going to work. Up until now I guess I had just become accustomed to the idea of dealing with chronic tiredness and somehow didn't even think it might be that extraordinary until about 6 months ago. It feels like so many people complain about tiredness in everyday life that I didn't think anything was wrong with me.
But as I've started working after graduating from college last May, I've struggled significantly more. I have a degree in sign language interpreting and had a flare up of tendonitis while I was in school (about ~2 years ago). It improved mildly after a little while of resting my arms every night and icing them and taking some pain meds, but that all felt like a short term solution. I've had issues ever since and they've only gotten worse since I graduated and started working a few hours shy of a full time interpreting gig doing an internship. It's become clear that something is wrong and my body can't take this much repetitive movement because I've had low-level constant pain since and it now flares up doing things outside of work that I used to consider mundane like videogames, scrolling on my phone, lifting a few plastic bags of groceries, holding my arms up in the air to brush my hair, etc. I mainly interpret for college level classes and even though I essentially got the same winter break as the students (around a month off), I still experienced pain throughout despite the fact that I wasn't working, didn't have my computer so I wasn't playing games or typing, wasn't cooking for myself (visiting family so they insisted on it), and sleeping in every day.
The few doctors I've been to have just told me to stop doing whatever it is that is causing the pain, but that will precipitate a major life change for me, making it impossible to get a job in the field I studied for. I've tried to counteract it by cutting out all non-work related activity I can, changing the way I interact with all my daily activities. I was just starting to play ice hockey and stopped because it required too much of my arms with shooting and stick handling. I've had to stop sewing (even though I only do it occasionally) because it bothers my arms and hands too much. I've cut a lot of my time playing videogames and have started buying pre-cut vegetables at the store to avoid spending time repetitively cutting the small pieces to make dinner. I find that I can't even get through mixing a box of cake batter without needing to take a break. I space out how I brush my hair so I don't have to have my arms up in the air as long.
I'm afraid I've injured myself irreparably and/or I will have to keep cutting out every activity I love just to not be in pain as much. I'm afraid I'll be in pain for the rest of my life, and I'm just looking for some validation that maybe this is what I'm experiencing so I can at least have a name to put to it. Some suggestions for activities that don't use the arms would also make me feel less like I'm sort of failing at everything.
Submitted February 01, 2017 at 12:47AM by milkflower http://ift.tt/2kPpPT6
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