Fatigue is my enemy

By Tatjana van der Krabben

For me personally fatigue is the cruelest lipedema symptom of them all. I can push through pain, happily fool myself into believing my legs and arms aren’t all that large (imagine the surprise when I went up a size), but the fatigue is always there. Two bad nights in a row? I’ll have to run on coffee for three days. A trip to New York City and walking 6-7 miles a couple of days in a row? I honestly look like I pulled an all-nighter.

Taking and having a moment at the New York library

 

It’s the stuff that drives me up the wall, the stuff I can’t fix. It got a lot better after liposuction and by upping vitamin B12, but I still don’t come close to the energy levels of a healthy person. It’s never enough, really. I’m full of ideas. There’s so much I want to do and all I constantly seem to do is weighing pros and cons, subtracting the estimated amount of energy per activity of the estimated total. I had to drop things along the way or conclude afterwards that a repeat of an activity may not be wise, even though I had a wonderful time. I can’t stand it.

Gem of a beach, the Algarve, Portugal - roughly 200 steps to reach it

Give me spoons*! I want to scream at the universe. Give me spoons to live my life, be there for my kids the way I would like to be there for them, to see more of the world, build my business, to help my ageing mother and actually have a social life.

It’s a little worse in fall and winter. I’m currently adjusting. Again. But I’m not motivated, because I don’t want to adjust. I just want to go about my routines as if it were spring or summer. Minimum. I would be better off going with the flow and deal with the facts, but right now I’m too busy being angry. I’ll learn. Again. And I will adjust. Again. Just not today.

*Spoon theory