Hi there, folks. I’m still here. Working behind the scenes. Doing lots of resting. I get infusions every 4 weeks of a disease modifying drug called Tysabri. I figured out a long time ago that my energy slowly declines throughout those 4 weeks, and by that fourth week I’m often fatiguing pretty hard. I won’t tell you how many years it took me to come to that realization, but let’s just say my friends and family figured it out well before I did. They saw the trend, while I just panicked every time that fatigue level rose. It was a terrible cycle.

This month my “fatigue week” was pretty gnarly. I had set a goal to run every day in the month of June but that proved quickly to be too much. I overdid it. I was barely moving. Sleeping a lot. Zoning out when I wasn’t sleepy. So I’ve been scaling back and listening to my body, resting when my body is refusing to move. I always have some level of fatigue but am usually able to manage it by taking lots of breaks, dividing work into smaller pieces, that sort of thing. But these past few days the fatigue was constant and it was rough. I had my infusion today, so I’m anticipating I’ll get some energy back soon and will be able to resume my regular household duties as well as all the things I do for fun (running, writing, crocheting, reading).

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m really grateful that I have this M.S. medication that works for me, keeps me from relapsing, and somehow helps relieve me of some of my fatigue. It’s not designed to do that, but a lot of people on the same medication share similar experience of a raised level of fatigue as the monthly infusion wears off. Meaning when the medicine is fresh in our system we feel less fatigued. I won’t go so far as to say it gives me energy, because that’s just not true. It’s just that when you constantly struggle with fatigue, the absence of it can mimic having energy, if that makes sense. I may be overexplaining, this, whatever. My brain is tired. Anyway, I’ve been on it for 13 years and pray it continues to work well for me. In the 14 years I’ve lived with this disease, they’ve come out with a ton more disease modifying drugs like the one I’m on, but from what I hear they also come with some crummy side effects. No thank you. I’ll stick with my Tysabri.

It’s all good. It’s always frustrating, these regular seasons of fatigue, but I always bounce back. No, that’s not true. It’s not bouncing back. It’s more of a slow ease back. I do not bounce around here. I gradually come back to a manageable level of energy. Meaning after today’s infusion, I’ll soon have the energy to manage life again. For another 3 weeks or so until it wears off again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

That is all for today. I’m working on a couple other blog posts and hope to have at least one of them ready for publishing this week. Once my brain is fully back online. Until then… peace out, party people.