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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Exercise for the Weak

First, a clarification on the previous post. The ER did not give me antibiotics, which is why I went to the RE who didn't have the right antibiotics on hand, and what they did give me added heart attack symptoms to the hallucinations of death and 'dissolvement' which is how I ended up at Dr. Vicodin's. So three days and three doctor's visits just to get the right stinking antibiotic for a 1% complication of infertility treatments.

Oh, and I missed a week of work due to illness. Those pelvic infections do not mess around.

I went back and edited the post trying to make the sequence of events a little clearer to future readers. I am not sure I did such a good job of it, but I tried.

On to today's post.

Exercise is interesting. I enjoy working out, but I have to say, the fact that exercise fatigues me to the point of napping is not so enjoyable.

People tell me I look tired. I think I look tired too. Puffy and pale.

And my brain gets 'eated' by the fatigue.

Today, on the drive home from the rec center (where the toddler swam while I did a slow zombie shuffle of 1.5 miles due to be tapped out from the previous day's workout) I thought we had gone South and West to get home instead of North and East.

Didn't recognize the stores or streets around me at all. Completely convinced we were going some other direction on some other street.

Even started talking about the route with hubby who oriented me as to the reality of road and direction.

Sigh.

I feel better now. After a nap.

The other interesting thing is now I crave salt. Really crave it. Eating lots of olives.

Seems like my body has no sense of direction either.

Maybe if I scale back to 2 metabolic resistance workouts a week and low impact 'steady state' cardio in between that will mitigate things? Because I've been trying to go full bore on alternate days, interval cardio training, half an hour of squats and jumps etc... I can handle it in terms of fitness, but the energy reserves/production just aren't there.

One of the NPs in my family gently suggested maybe this wasn't the time to be trying to lose weight and exercise. Hah. If I wait for the right time, I would do nothing.

In a month, when I taper again, there will be no exercise, it will be impossible for I don't know how long. However, I hope there will be new weight loss to maintain and then, when I feel better, I will drag myself through those painful beginner workouts yet again.

Pain and pain and pain. That's what it's like to exercise with illness.

This is as good as it gets. The challenge is to figure out how to make do with less than the best.

3 comments:

  1. Either before your workouts, or after if you're real sore, try taking some GENERIC Tylenol arthritis. This may help with some of the pain while you're tapering. Also, you could wear some of those ThermaCare and/or Icy Hot patches. Thermacare ones are like having a heating pad attached to you. Icy Hot has menthol, so is more of a cool/warm. I use both, often at the same time, on my days where my muscles feel "pummeled".

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  2. I can relate to how awful it feels to exercise when your body is in pain...so this is just a little round of applause for you for doing all that you are.

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  3. Thanks for the support. I'm not in pain now as I'm sufficiently conditioned to not be sore. It'll be when I have to stop and start up again that it will hurt. I never get to stay conditioned.

    The last time I had trouble with my knee. This time I had muscle spasms that induced sciatica type symptoms (which I was able to self treat and resolve in about a week, massage therapy is good for something!).

    Now it's just the fatigue. I'm absolutely wiped. Normal people don't go to bed after exercise do they?

    M

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