Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Support Group
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) describes a sense of exhaustion and post-exertion malaise, even when you have gotten enough rest and sleep. The disease is characterized by six months of incapacitating fatigue experienced as profound exhaustion and extremely poor stamina, and problems with concentration and short-term memory. The cause is unknown, but it is a...
What does a crash feel like to you? This is my experience..
A crash is like a wave, which can start quite subtly, builds to a crest , crashes (sorry) and then recedes...
When I am going into a crash I feel the warning signs. I feel really, really tired and have the overwhelming urge to lie down. I get disoriented, stumble, walk into walls etc. I become confused, I have to focus really hard if someone is speaking to me and sometimes still cant make a bit of sense of what they are saying. Vision blurs, ability to comprehend written mateiral is simply gone.
If I haven't taken the hint and gotten myself into bed, then I may get one of my rare headaches. This is blinding and totally unresistant to pain meds. I usuall regret getting this far because the headache can stick around for days.
When I do make it to a bed I can lose consciousness quite suddenly. I am normally a light sleeper but in a crash sleep I have no awareness of anything around me. I know simply I lay down at 10am and its now 8pm and I'm wondering what the heck?!?
Sometimes my 'healing sleep' is so profound I wake up feeling that my body has cannibalized itself. My eyes feel sunken and I'm always surprised to look in a mirror and see I'm the same size I was before.
When my body crashes I hurt..my joints feel like they are swimming in pools of lactic acid. My larger muscle groups throb. My back, my abs, thighs, shoulders and my glutes hurt (my butt hurts A LOT!). Lucky for me pain level is usually moderate as I find painkillers don't really work when I'm, crashing.
Coming out of a crash I often feel rejuvenated.. until I swing those legs out of bed, stand up and realize my mistake. I'm sweating, I'm dizzy, heart is racing, usually have to get to the nearest wall to keep from falling. Some days I feel perfectly fine, make it halfway up the stairs and then realize.. the human head is awfully heavy. Its really hard to keep it up. The back too is hard to keep in a vertical position. And the joints hurt when you bend them .. back to bed. When I am crashing , sitiing upright in even the most comfy couch, propped up with pillows for more than 5 minutes will send me right back into that deep sleep state for hours.
This is ironic..When I am crashing the hypersensitivity is ridiculous. I will wake from a dead sleep because my son got up to change the tv channel and his energy is aggravating me. He's made the mistake of making a nice meal while I slept, walked into the room and the smell woke me .. not good. Every window in my room is heavily draped to keep out even a sliver of sunlight, and if he turns on his laptop in an adjoinging room, I am awake and sooo not happy. Light, sound, smell, energy, noise .. all have to be muted when I am crashing, because...
In a crash state I am IRRITABLE, I am irrational. I will go off in spectacular fashion with the slightest provocation .. then I'll promptly crash again!
In a crash state I cant read.. cant assimilate and really cant see the actual words much of the time. I cant watch tv, the sound tracks aggavate me terribly and I cant concentrate on the content. Magazines are too heavy to hold up while I look at the pictures. Cant write or do hobbies, cant talk on the phone (who knew talking could be so TIRING!)...just lie in bed and vegetate. The toughest thing for me is that multiple energy systems seem to be at play and they come out of the crash at different rates, my mind may be alert but my body is pretty useless so I just feel tortured. Other times my body feels fine but my mind is cloudy and cant hang on to a thought to save my life...
Sometimes I sleep right through a crash, sometimes I can't sleep even though I'm too exhausted to open my eyes...another form of torture.
I have so many types of crashes I have classified them
- I get 1-2 mini crashes on the average day. Then all the cognitive symptoms come on and my only goal is to keep from falling over on my desk. Given an hour or 2 these mini crashes pass.
- The forced rest crash will cause me to fall into deep sleep for 4-5 hours then be groggy and disoriented afterward. But I'm usually OK by the next day.
- A major crash will leave me bedbound from 2-3 days, to up to 2 weeks. In these crashes I wake only to eat and eliminate.
- A marathon crash can last a few months and you are in a crash state about 90% of the time throughout. These are scary, I usally seek medical help for these.
This is my experience, what is yours?
A crash is like a wave, which can start quite subtly, builds to a crest , crashes (sorry) and then recedes...
When I am going into a crash I feel the warning signs. I feel really, really tired and have the overwhelming urge to lie down. I get disoriented, stumble, walk into walls etc. I become confused, I have to focus really hard if someone is speaking to me and sometimes still cant make a bit of sense of what they are saying. Vision blurs, ability to comprehend written mateiral is simply gone.
If I haven't taken the hint and gotten myself into bed, then I may get one of my rare headaches. This is blinding and totally unresistant to pain meds. I usuall regret getting this far because the headache can stick around for days.
When I do make it to a bed I can lose consciousness quite suddenly. I am normally a light sleeper but in a crash sleep I have no awareness of anything around me. I know simply I lay down at 10am and its now 8pm and I'm wondering what the heck?!?
Sometimes my 'healing sleep' is so profound I wake up feeling that my body has cannibalized itself. My eyes feel sunken and I'm always surprised to look in a mirror and see I'm the same size I was before.
When my body crashes I hurt..my joints feel like they are swimming in pools of lactic acid. My larger muscle groups throb. My back, my abs, thighs, shoulders and my glutes hurt (my butt hurts A LOT!). Lucky for me pain level is usually moderate as I find painkillers don't really work when I'm, crashing.
Coming out of a crash I often feel rejuvenated.. until I swing those legs out of bed, stand up and realize my mistake. I'm sweating, I'm dizzy, heart is racing, usually have to get to the nearest wall to keep from falling. Some days I feel perfectly fine, make it halfway up the stairs and then realize.. the human head is awfully heavy. Its really hard to keep it up. The back too is hard to keep in a vertical position. And the joints hurt when you bend them .. back to bed. When I am crashing , sitiing upright in even the most comfy couch, propped up with pillows for more than 5 minutes will send me right back into that deep sleep state for hours.
This is ironic..When I am crashing the hypersensitivity is ridiculous. I will wake from a dead sleep because my son got up to change the tv channel and his energy is aggravating me. He's made the mistake of making a nice meal while I slept, walked into the room and the smell woke me .. not good. Every window in my room is heavily draped to keep out even a sliver of sunlight, and if he turns on his laptop in an adjoinging room, I am awake and sooo not happy. Light, sound, smell, energy, noise .. all have to be muted when I am crashing, because...
In a crash state I am IRRITABLE, I am irrational. I will go off in spectacular fashion with the slightest provocation .. then I'll promptly crash again!
In a crash state I cant read.. cant assimilate and really cant see the actual words much of the time. I cant watch tv, the sound tracks aggavate me terribly and I cant concentrate on the content. Magazines are too heavy to hold up while I look at the pictures. Cant write or do hobbies, cant talk on the phone (who knew talking could be so TIRING!)...just lie in bed and vegetate. The toughest thing for me is that multiple energy systems seem to be at play and they come out of the crash at different rates, my mind may be alert but my body is pretty useless so I just feel tortured. Other times my body feels fine but my mind is cloudy and cant hang on to a thought to save my life...
Sometimes I sleep right through a crash, sometimes I can't sleep even though I'm too exhausted to open my eyes...another form of torture.
I have so many types of crashes I have classified them
- I get 1-2 mini crashes on the average day. Then all the cognitive symptoms come on and my only goal is to keep from falling over on my desk. Given an hour or 2 these mini crashes pass.
- The forced rest crash will cause me to fall into deep sleep for 4-5 hours then be groggy and disoriented afterward. But I'm usually OK by the next day.
- A major crash will leave me bedbound from 2-3 days, to up to 2 weeks. In these crashes I wake only to eat and eliminate.
- A marathon crash can last a few months and you are in a crash state about 90% of the time throughout. These are scary, I usally seek medical help for these.
This is my experience, what is yours?
More resting and pacing...less crashing. Nobody has ever actually mastered pacing....we keep trying though. Stubborn type A's that we are.
Most of what you described happens to me, at least in part in my definition of crash. We all crash differently. What we do agree upon, is that it will subside. But we have to STOP, and rest and build up the energy again. From ground zero. And that can take from hours, to days, to months for some.
I usually have a series of what you refer to as "mini-crashes" throughout the day, with steadily low energy the rest of the day.
I get the feelings of dizziness, racing heart, etc., with most of my non-mini crashes now. But they're fewer than they were a couple years ago.
Very bad brain fog and absolutely gawdawful diarrhea (the IBS kicks right in, ugh).
Ashen pale face, sunken eyes. A zombie.
Adrenaline is most likely why you are so hypersensitive *you may know this already, sorry*. That fact is actually good. It means you haven't totally burned yourself out yet. To keep that from happening, "Keep Calm and carry on" as they say. Keep it steady, try not to be anxious, keep sugars almost non existent, simple carbs go away and eat mostly protein every 3 yrs along with complex carbs (a bit)... non starchy veggies and keep your blood pressure up if it sinks down. (We might be the only folks who get to add salt to be more healthy)
If you keep liquids near the bed and drink a good 4-6 oz before you try to stand it may help. I use ginger tea with coconut oil in it. I keep it in a thermal cup and it stays hot for 10 hrs. That sunken feeling may well be dehydration, which will cause the dizziness as well.
As for how mine feel now - mostly things start to not make sense. I get confused. If I'm driving I sometimes need to pull over, take out my phone and set my gps to take me home because I don't recognize my surroundings. I've been known to need to leave my car and have hubby come get me but now I just don't go if I am not positive I'm up to it. At home I can tell because I find myself standing in one place for... a long time until my knees give out. It's as though I to into Neutral and stall. Yes, that's exactly it, this old girl just stalls....
I'll get 'whirlly' as well & kind of studder or lose really common words when Im talking.
I have fibro as well & its hard to tell which is from what & not that anyone with fibro would want to hear this but I really think chronic fatigue is worse to deal with...it can just suck the life outta ya!
Yes between the two I feel like Im walking a tight rope & always pacing to keep things in check but just when I think I have it figured out I'll feel a bit warm & a sore throat (not part of fibro) thats when I know Ive overdone it, even if Im not doing much more than what Ive done before.
Maybe the key is to keep the energy level the same each day. Not have a super busy day & then the next be a slow/lazy day? I dont really know just a thought, guess its something for me to try :)