Who Turned-up the Gravity?

When my doctor told me that the end is in sight, I asked him what it will be like.  Then I held my breath hoping he would not say “Weeks of babbling nonsense, complete incontinence, and horrible pain”.

There may be some of that coming but what he told me I’d feel most acutely is “tired”.

Well that doesn’t sound too bad, I thought.  And it still doesn’t but I am getting a clearer sense of what he meant.  Turns out there are levels of ‘tired’ that you don’t know about.  

First there’s the everyday tired we all know.  The kind where you need a good night’s sleep or maybe even a nap to recover.

Then there is the ‘totally beat’ tired.  It’s probably what Med students feel after 36 hours on-call.  I experienced it once when I did an Ironman.  After 140.6 miles of swim, bike, and run my tank was completely empty.  That kind of tired takes a little longer to recover from.

Next is ‘fatigue’.  It builds up when your activity level and rest time are out of balance for a long time.  Single-moms working two jobs can tell you all about this.  Many veterans can too.

What I’m getting a taste of now is different.  Not necessarily worse (yet) but it’s a new feeling.  Kind of like someone found a dial that controls the earth’s gravity and turned it up on me.  

Everything seems a little tougher and, no matter how much I sleep, nap, or rest it doesn’t get any better.  

Annoying but certainly could be worse.  And I suspect it probably will be.