Body 19 Mar 2008 02:57 pm
aikido doubts
I dunno about aikido for me, folks.
Here’s the thing. Chronic fatigue syndrome (I still dislike that name) has made me well aware of the varieties of fatigue. I divide them into three basic stages:
- Stage 1: Your brain is telling you that you’re tired. Really, really tired. Man, would you like to sit down. A nap seems like a good idea. Sheesh, what a long day/week/month. You just don’t think you can bear to drag yourself around. Your limbs are heavy. When I had mononucleosis, it was generally an advanced Stage 1 phenomenon.
- Stage 2: You start making unusual cognitive errors. Word-finding becomes difficult. Your judgment may become questionable. Your balance goes off. Your circulation may be somewhat restricted. Aural and visual perceptions get strange. You start having little mini zonkouts; you sit down to a plate of scrambled eggs and suddenly come to with your face a couple of inches from the plate. You become very spacey — I once nearly left the house without pants on, and while that’s pretty bad, the fact that I was actually ambulatory puts it into 2 rather than 3.
- Stage 3: you hit the Wall and you go down. I don’t care how much of a badass you think you are, or how much positive thinking you can muster, you’re going down. Maybe you have time to take off your shoes, maybe you don’t. Maybe you can be awakened, maybe you can’t. You may lose time in some kind of blackout stage before you actually sleep, and wake up to find that you’ve put your keys somewhere really weird.
In stage 1, you can suck it up and deal; in stage 2, you can often fake it; in stage 3, forget it, you’re toast. Hey, at least it doesn’t hurt.
I’m convinced that a fair bit of some able-bodied people’s jackassery about CFS comes from their applying stage 1 rules inappropriately to people who are dealing with the realities of stages 2 and 3 in their lives.
Anyhow, as I’ve been recovering from CFS, I’ve been able to spend a lot less time in the nastier stages of fatigue. That’s great. Stage 1 is really not all that bad; the difference between being unfatigued and being able safely to ignore and manage your fatigue is not as big as all that.
My strategy of the last couple of years has been to accept that I live in stage 1, purposefully visit stage 2, and avoid stage 3. (Too much time at the Wall of Fatigue seems to make things worse, not better.) You can imagine it this way: I live with a full-time flu and I put myself into light shock a few times a week. And this has been great. For somebody with my health history, I’m pretty badass. I attribute this to working tenaciously at my edge, not to mention having a lot of luck and support.
And here’s my problem. The edge is tricky. The edge is in stage 2. I can get sloppy when I get tired enough to be stupid, pale, and unbalanced. Usually it’s fine, but sometimes I screw up and injure myself. That’s okay when it’s just me. But in aikido, if I’m defending (the “nage” role), it’s my responsibility to make sure that the other person (”uke”) is safe. I’m not sure I can work at my edge and take care of uke.
I’m thinking I might have to wait a little while until I can be sure that I can fulfill that responsibility. Aikido’s a real reach for me, and it may be slightly too much of one. There’s not a lot of slack in the system right now, and I’m feeling pretty stretched here. On the other hand, I understand that things happen to everybody. I’m not the only person who can get sloppy in there. I just don’t know. We’ll see.
ETA: And having thought about it — it’s not cool of me to risk somebody else’s getting an elbow in the face because I’ve stretched it too far and can’t bring sufficient focus to the mat. I need to take some time to regroup, get over this damn lingering sinus infection, practice some rolls in the park, and build my strength and stamina for a few more months. Well, crap. I’m disappointed, but there it is.
Or as Garfield Minus Garfield puts it:
![[boldly] I'm off to conquer the world! [empty panel] [hangdog expression] Maybe the world is this way.](http://data.tumblr.com/fSymsOGXO6ryp1mwTk7KFhsE_500.gif)
on 19 Mar 2008 at 3:43 pm 1.Karen said …
What an insightful post, and useful set of categories.
I tend to experience fatigue as a complement to depression, rather than the other way around. (This past December and January were unusual for being fatigue-driven, as I healed from a broken rib; I described it as, “all of the symptoms of depression except the depression.”)
It isn’t fun, and I’m not very good at sucking it up through stage 1 for more than a week or two.
But I had never thought to draw the distinction between stage 2 and stage 3, which really are quite different. Stage 2 feels like I’ve been drugged, but stage 3 doesn’t feel at all; I’m simply absent until my brain can climb back up to stage 2 again. And I tend to live through stage 2 at least once or twice a year, while stage 3 has overtaken me only a few times in my life.
Frankly, I wouldn’t voluntarily visit either one of them … and so I think I understand what you mean by purposefully visiting stage 2 in order to avoid stage 3. I do something mighty similar but (nominally) higher functioning, dipping very carefully into stage 1 for a week or a fortnight at a time in order not to sink any deeper.
Even without taking fatigue into consideration, I’m deeply impressed at how much you get done in your life; add the fatigue, and verily art thou among the baddest of asses.
on 07 May 2008 at 9:18 pm 2.emily said …
excuse the excessively late comment from a stranger, but this post struck such a chord with me that i had to say hello.
(hi, i’m dating mr. jtron, who directed me to your recent post about smarty pants fortune-telling chickens. while reading back about WHY you were getting chickens - i’m jealous, btw - i stumbled across this post.)
i’ve been dealing with a weird fatigue issue myself for the last 14 months or so. after months and months of every test under the sun and still no diagnosis, they finally found a slight abnormality in a sleep study, and dubbed it “idiopathic hypersomnia.” (literally translated, “you’re suddenly tired all the time and we don’t know why.) apparently, had there not been that slight abnormality, they would have called it CFS.
before the fatigue hit, i’d been extremely active (i’m a drummer, among other things). i had to go on indefinite hiatus from everything i was involved with, which made me extremely sad. with proper sleep, diet, and medication, i’m doing a lot better than i was last spring, but i’m still nowhere near 100%. it’s frustrating, because i miss playing and being active, but i just don’t feel strong enough to do what i was doing before. and i can’t commit myself to anything on a regular basis, because i never know when i’ll have to flake out because i’m feeling too tired and physically cannot participate. ugh.
anyway, hi. i’m going to add you on lj. cool?
on 07 May 2008 at 9:56 pm 3.Cam Sculpin said …
Oh cool! The famous Emily! Mr. Jtron is pretty crazy about you, sounds like, which is a fine recommendation. If you guys ever travel to Seattle, we oughta meet up.
I know exactly what you mean about the flaking out problem. That is the worst. I used to pride myself on being super conscientious, but the fatigue thing turned me flaky. There just wasn’t any help for it. You can’t do what can’t be done, and it can be hard or impossible to really know in advance what can or can’t be done on any given day. Grrr.
I’m vastly better these days, and it feels like I’m making up for a world-class case of cabin fever. Must! Do! Everything!
I’ll say this for disabling fatigue, though: it can make you really, really organized. When you have fewer waking hours in the day, you do start to learn to put your time in order something fierce, don’t you think?
on 08 May 2008 at 8:46 am 4.emily said …
Yes! Crippling fatigue also makes you stop and take a look at who and what is actually WORTH your time and energy. It kills me that some of my friends (or more accurately, some of my ex-friends) think I’m just being lazy and/or irresponsible, but those people are assholes, so there you go.
I’ve also figured out how to stay mentally busy, even if I can’t be as physically busy as I want to be… so maybe I can’t do midnight theater anymore, and maybe taiko is out of the question at the moment. That’s ok, ’cause I learned how to knit, and I’ve been doing A LOT of sewing lately, and I started a blog with the co-hosts from my radio show. All things I can do in my pajamas! And knitting and needlepoint don’t even really take brain power, for those nights when I’m stupid tired! Hooray!