Every day in the run up to Christmas I’m going to post a symptom or side effect of fibromyalgia – at the risk of sounding too twee for words, it’s the blog equivalent of opening the door on your advent calendar. Instead of a chocolate snowman you get a little window into what it’s like to have fibro.

December 1st: Fatigue

One of the main symptoms of fibromyalgia and the bane of my life. Many people think that fatigue is synonymous with simply being tired, but I’m here to tell you it’s not even in the same league.

Fatigue is an exhaustion so extreme it takes over everything, physically and mentally. It hits my entire body. My legs and arms feel like they’ve been filled with sand. Quite often I’m concerned my organs have simply stopped working. Walking a few steps makes my muscles burn like I’ve run up ten flights of stairs without pause.

Fatigue can hit without warning. I can feel totally fine one minute and then I’ll do something really trivial like hang out the washing or put my child into her car seat and suddenly I’ve got zero energy and I can’t move. It’s like having a really old phone – you charge it to 100% and unplug it, but the moment you open an app it’s all too much for the battery and it immediately drains to a critical level.

We’ve all been there. This is a metaphor we can all relate to.

The main difference between tiredness and chronic fatigue is that sleep doesn’t really do anything for it. Oh it helps for a bit – I can go from being unable to function to being able to focus my eyes and string a sentence together, but it doesn’t refresh, it just takes the edge off. To flog the phone metaphor a little more, if you plug that old iPhone in the battery will charge a bit, but once you take it off and try to use it again it’s going to crash straight back down to 0%.

When I was diagnosed I was given painkillers for the pain aspect of fibromyagia, but there’s no equivalent for fatigue. (Believe me, I’ve asked several times.) Just advice like “don’t overdo it!” and “pacing is important!” (Pacing is famously very easy to do when you have a two and a half year old, which is why I’m so great at managing my own fatigue. Not.) The line you have to waljk is so, so fine that the only way you can guarantee that you’re not going to accidentally go over it is by not doing anything at all, ever. Not really an option most people are able to – or would want to – opt for.

So you walk the line. And if you’re anything like me, you still fall into the trap of “I feel good! Let’s do loads of stuff!” and then spend the next four days face down on the couch. Every time.