“Fatigue makes fools of us all. It robs you of your skills and your judgment, and it blinds you to creative solutions.” ~ Harvey Mackay

It’s amazing how your life can change without your consent. I never gave anyone permission to give me MS. I’d be less angry if I had received some type of warning. If I had known I only had 25 years of MS free living, maybe I would have lived my life different. Perhaps I would have saved more money. But I guess everyone can say that.

What affects me the most about MS is the uncertainty of the whole thing. It’s weird how life can be going just fine, then turn for the worst. That terrifying instant when your smooth path changes into a bumpy road. For me, that moment was yesterday.

It was around six at night. That’s the time I usually get tired and fatigued everyday. That’s why this should not have been a big deal.

But it was.

During dinner I suddenly stopped being able to feed myself. I did not have the strength to pick up my spoon. My husband, who noticed I was having a problem, calmly came over to the table. He did his own check to see if I could lift the spoon with his support. When I failed that test, it was like all the oxygen was sucked out of the room. I just stared at the plate of food. Then he began to slowly feed me.

It’s bad enough I have to eat with a spoon because I have trouble using a fork, but wow, I don’t think I’m ready to have someone feed me all the time.

I managed to hold it together to finish eating and even watch TV afterwards. And, thank goodness, we didn’t talk about it because I may not have had the strength to hold back my tears if we had.

Not being able to feed myself has happened before but it was always short-lived. So I am assuming this time will also be temporary. The good thing is, I think I know what happened. For some reason, this particular day I had an extremely busy schedule. You would think energy conservation would be one of the things I am good at by now. But I’m not.

Sitting around and resting drives me crazy. I can’t bare the sound of silence. My thoughts tend to take me to bad places. So I fill that time with errands. And sometimes I over do it. So I need to reassess the task I do in a day so this won’t happen anymore.

We all know we are not supposed to let ourselves get that tired.

But I guess even the best of us make mistakes.

Later that night, my mood was really in a bad spot. I sat in bed for a while, then eventually buried my face in the pillow and cried myself to sleep. But in the morning I felt energetic. I was able to brush my teeth and eat some cereal without any help.

Hooray for me!

I just hope I will be strong enough to feed myself for Thanksgiving.