Monday, July 15, 2013

Running on Less than Empty

The problem with having CFS/CFIDS is that you never have enough energy and if you do have any it expends quickly with little rebound. I write “little” because if there was none, you’d be dead. Instead returning energy trickles in at glacial rate. Add in being a type A personality and it becomes a recipe for running one’s self into the ground the moment you have any energy.

This month of July has been a tough one of burning up energy and crashing repeatedly with each crash harder than the prior one. It began with family visiting and being on maximum output through the first week. Somehow I made it through that with only a small lapse into a bronchial infection that cleared up after two days.

The past week had a lot of going out and about starting on Wednesday. While I had fun I’ve not been pacing myself properly which means things have caught up to me the last couple of days. For me, that means not doing much other than playing video games and sleeping – except my pain tolerance goes down the more exhausted I get.

What does that mean? Not much productive sleep due to the increased pain. The weather constantly changing effects my joints especially my knees and back. So being the idiot I am, pushing to do too much while this going on doubles the pain. That’s part of the fun of having chronic pain on top of the fatigue, immune, and neural problems of my illness.

I’ve been dull mentally due to all this, so getting reviews written has fallen by the wayside. Dumb mistakes are part and parcel of the “brain fog” CFS so I let one inappropriate comment get posted on the blog for an hour before realizing it needed to be deleted. This is why I play video games when I get like this. Mistakes there don’t matter even if it is Star Trek Online since I’m doing the solo player missions until I hit level 50.

At least I had some fun this week. A visit to a shooting range with friends revealed that my Ruger P944 really does hit six inches low and to the left even when fired by a very good shot. Since I’m not, I’ve blamed myself for most of the missing and when it was verified that it was off that much at seven yards it is no wonder I can’t hit anything further out at all. New fixed sights are in order along with a good gunsmith to drill and pin in the front, but it will be next month before I can contemplate replacing them.

Finally seeing Pacific Rim was another high point even though I’d pushed myself too far by the point I entered the theater. It was strange going to Winona to see a movie since it has to be over twenty years since I was in that cineplex. I clearly remember seeing Tim Burton’s Batman there and may have seen Batman Returns at the location.

In-between those excursions I’d been out to eat with my father a couple of times and had assisted a local hardware store with some technical issues. The latter is not finished and will eat into my stamina for the week just about when I’ll start being more functional. Ah well.

Besides getting a review or two up this week, I need to write about the new PC build properly. It has turned out to be a beast of a computer far exceeding my expectations. It’ll take almost a year to pay off, but it has been worth every cent.

Hard to believe July is half over already.

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