How To Spend My Spoons

Exhaustion is my constant companion. I wake, stretch, get dressed and go lie back down. I’m always pushing to do the smallest things. I can’t even bear to remember how I was, just how I can be now. 

 

I explain this exhaustion as the feeling you get after running a marathon, crossing the line and falling into a joyous limp body heap. However, this exhaustion comes after no exertion and there is no joy in it at all. See I've Become A Passenger.

When a friend of mine with rheumatoid arthritis found out I have an autoimmune disease she told me about the 12 spoon theory which is great. It talks about having 12 spoons of energy every day to start with and how different things takes spoons away the energy in different amounts. The problem is sometimes, I have no spoons to start out with.  

 RP The Ride of My Life is a documentary about Relapsing Polychondritis, a rare autoimmune disease. Take-away: ““When you cannot do what you have always done, then you only do what matters most.” Robert D Hales

"I hate to cancel. I know we made plans
to get together tonight,
but that was 2 hours ago.
I was younger then, full of hope.
But now I'm tired." 

-:-

The Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino

• A person has roughly the same amount of energy each day.

• Each unit of energy is represented by a spoon.

• Healthy people have more spoons (energy) than those with an illness that causes chronic fatigue.

• Some activities cost more spoons than others.

• A person with a fatiguing chronic illness needs to make decisions about which activities to spend their limited number of spoons (energy) on -- the illness stops them doing many things they want to do.

• The chronic illness means that if the person does too much in the morning, they will not have enough spoons left for the afternoon or evening.

• The chronic illness may mean that a person can do something in the morning OR on the afternoon - but NOT both. They may seem inconsistent because their energy levels and number of spoons fluctuate.

• A healthy person does not need to plan how to spend their spoons, because they do not have an illness that limits them.

All of these things are from Relapsing Polychondritis. In all of this is the pain. The only thing on me that it hasn’t been attacked yet are my heart valves. Hopefully RP didn’t read that memo and leaves my heart alone.