Miss Metta
Peer Supporter
At what stage do I call it TMS?
I'm not new to TMS and need no convincing; I was introduced to it about 5 years ago and
have managed some significant healing. A new problem as arisen and I'm unsure about it.
In August I had a colonoscopy and while under anesthetic, developed aspiration pneumonia. In
other words, my own saliva, probably, went down my lungs. What were the chances of that? 1 in 5,000.
The pneumonia made me really sick - worse than I thought I would be, in fact initially I was in denial. I was treated with antibiotics. At the time, I also developed depression.
I was restricted with what I could do and I was trying to run a pet-sitting business - unfortunately I couldn't cancel clients as they were overseas and their cats and dogs depended on me. This, I think, was part of the worst of it, I needed to stay in bed but other little beings were dependent upon me for their well-being so I couldn't just stay in bed. I dragged myself to each visit feeling really unwell. I looked grey. At the same time,
several of my own pets became chronically ill one after the other and it took a toll because I did not have the physical or emotional reserves to care for dying animals, I was still sick myself- one of them went on for 9 weeks. When he died, I howled not because I'd lost him so much as the relief that I didn't have to do all this intensive care of him anymore when I was so weak myself.
At about the 9 week mark I went to my doctor because I couldn't shake the cough or the fatigue or depression and I thought it had gone on long enough. She didn't want to do anything but wait.
At the 11 week mark the specialist who performed the colonoscopy phoned me personally to see how I was doing. I said I still had fatigue and had to take naps all the time and still had the cough, which my husband says I sound like a dog barking sometimes. He ordered blood tests that might cover fatigue, the usual stuff like iron and Vitamin D (I have had low iron in the past that has explained fatigue but this fatigue feels very different).
Also had a chest xray. The xray showed no more active infection on my lungs and the blood test, which covered a lot of things, also came back normal.
Which was good news.
But why this persistent fatigue and cotton woool head? Even my husband at times has said to me I look terrible; grey in the face and coughing like a dog.
I'm trying to find out what is normal with pneumonia, what to expect, which is why the number of weeks matter; illness has a time-frame, before I call it the TMS card.
I thought I should be well by now .
Something else weird also started happening. I am normally one of those annoyingly energetic and chirpy morning people.
Not anymore. It became impossible to get up in the morning and when I did (do) I'm headachey, cotton-wool head and dragging fatigue. This lasts until around about 4-6 pm when it starts to lift and I start to feel somewhat brighter and more normal. What's started happening is - anticipating this window of increased well-being - I do whatever I can during the day but save intense stuff, like exercise, for the evening.
This is terribly inconvenient because evening I'm supposed to be preparing dinner and tending my animals. I found I'm trying to squeeze in sets in my home gym and recently was exercising at 9.30 at night. This later energy I knew I could have pushed out and could have kept going until 1 or 2 am,just to get stuff done that seemed impossible during the day, but I didn't want to get into that routine, of staying up until the small hours, so at 10 pm I shut everything down and go to bed and wake up unable to move again.
I did however find I felt better on warm, humid days and was looking forward to summer and thought that summer will help me heal.
At around the 12 week mark I started to notice energetic days here and there and felt that I'd turned the corner and was on the up. I kept trying to stay in touch with my feelings.
But then this. I live in Sydney and we have experienced massive bushfires surrounding us since 16th November. The smoke has has persisted for over a month, now, with at least 17 of those days the air quality reaching hazardous levels. I am not the only person to feel dread and depressed, everybody is affected
and some people, with asthma and heart disease are certainly more danger than me. The atmosphere can only be described as apocalyptic.
But I found it also made my symptoms worse - the fatigue is worse on smokey days and the cough comes back and I feel very depressed. I don't exercise. We are told not to exercise especially outdoors on smoke haze days.
(as I write, the air is acrid and smoke haze is drifting into every crevice of the house)
Earlier this week I was feeling real fatigue so decided it's been a few weeks, I'll go to the doctor again as my symptoms are also consistent with walking pneumonia.
In other words, wondering whether I have two infections and only been treated for one.
She ordered tests again which I've yet to get the results. I asked her about the change from a morning to an evening person and the morning fatigue and she said it was a symptom of depression. I'm convinced the depression has gone, it started to lift around the 11 week mark. When I had the pneumonia I could not stop crying or playing music by Taylor Swift over and over and everything affected me emotionally and daily life and tasks were a huge struggle. This lifted around the 11 week mark of its own accord. I'm convinced it was biological and once my body started getting better, so did the depression.
I did not have helplessness and bleak future thoughts that normally go with depression. I just couldn't stop crying and I couldn't function, that's all. This stopped. So her assessment that it's depression, I don't agree with.
Here's my question: what is reasonable recovery time for pneumonia? I have read that at the 3 month mark, approx 52% of people over 50 (that's me) still feel ongoing fatigue and that this is the last symptom to vanish. But that's only one article. I'm looking for a benchmark. I have had some people say to me that recovery takes a long time and I'm pushing it. What is not helping is the toxic air.
Am I hurrying recovery? Am I pushing and in reality, it just does take this long? Or have I now moved into the TMS zone?
I refuse to think I now have CFS although annoyingly, my symptoms seem like it but I know from lots of reading that CFS is TMS so I don't even know why my brain would try and put that one over on me, because I've been on these forums and others enough to know that CFS is TMS. Still, my symptoms are ongoing crashing fatigue that has a bit of a pattern but is much worse on smoke haze days.
After this last blood test if it comes back normal I won't be chasing anything else t medical hough still cannot explain the cough. She can't hear anything when she listens to my chest.
So although I'm improved since August/September/October, there is still lingering fatigue on many days (not all, but particularly smoke-haze days).
TMS or my body just needs more time?
thank you for your insights
Miss Metta
I'm not new to TMS and need no convincing; I was introduced to it about 5 years ago and
have managed some significant healing. A new problem as arisen and I'm unsure about it.
In August I had a colonoscopy and while under anesthetic, developed aspiration pneumonia. In
other words, my own saliva, probably, went down my lungs. What were the chances of that? 1 in 5,000.
The pneumonia made me really sick - worse than I thought I would be, in fact initially I was in denial. I was treated with antibiotics. At the time, I also developed depression.
I was restricted with what I could do and I was trying to run a pet-sitting business - unfortunately I couldn't cancel clients as they were overseas and their cats and dogs depended on me. This, I think, was part of the worst of it, I needed to stay in bed but other little beings were dependent upon me for their well-being so I couldn't just stay in bed. I dragged myself to each visit feeling really unwell. I looked grey. At the same time,
several of my own pets became chronically ill one after the other and it took a toll because I did not have the physical or emotional reserves to care for dying animals, I was still sick myself- one of them went on for 9 weeks. When he died, I howled not because I'd lost him so much as the relief that I didn't have to do all this intensive care of him anymore when I was so weak myself.
At about the 9 week mark I went to my doctor because I couldn't shake the cough or the fatigue or depression and I thought it had gone on long enough. She didn't want to do anything but wait.
At the 11 week mark the specialist who performed the colonoscopy phoned me personally to see how I was doing. I said I still had fatigue and had to take naps all the time and still had the cough, which my husband says I sound like a dog barking sometimes. He ordered blood tests that might cover fatigue, the usual stuff like iron and Vitamin D (I have had low iron in the past that has explained fatigue but this fatigue feels very different).
Also had a chest xray. The xray showed no more active infection on my lungs and the blood test, which covered a lot of things, also came back normal.
Which was good news.
But why this persistent fatigue and cotton woool head? Even my husband at times has said to me I look terrible; grey in the face and coughing like a dog.
I'm trying to find out what is normal with pneumonia, what to expect, which is why the number of weeks matter; illness has a time-frame, before I call it the TMS card.
I thought I should be well by now .
Something else weird also started happening. I am normally one of those annoyingly energetic and chirpy morning people.
Not anymore. It became impossible to get up in the morning and when I did (do) I'm headachey, cotton-wool head and dragging fatigue. This lasts until around about 4-6 pm when it starts to lift and I start to feel somewhat brighter and more normal. What's started happening is - anticipating this window of increased well-being - I do whatever I can during the day but save intense stuff, like exercise, for the evening.
This is terribly inconvenient because evening I'm supposed to be preparing dinner and tending my animals. I found I'm trying to squeeze in sets in my home gym and recently was exercising at 9.30 at night. This later energy I knew I could have pushed out and could have kept going until 1 or 2 am,just to get stuff done that seemed impossible during the day, but I didn't want to get into that routine, of staying up until the small hours, so at 10 pm I shut everything down and go to bed and wake up unable to move again.
I did however find I felt better on warm, humid days and was looking forward to summer and thought that summer will help me heal.
At around the 12 week mark I started to notice energetic days here and there and felt that I'd turned the corner and was on the up. I kept trying to stay in touch with my feelings.
But then this. I live in Sydney and we have experienced massive bushfires surrounding us since 16th November. The smoke has has persisted for over a month, now, with at least 17 of those days the air quality reaching hazardous levels. I am not the only person to feel dread and depressed, everybody is affected
and some people, with asthma and heart disease are certainly more danger than me. The atmosphere can only be described as apocalyptic.
But I found it also made my symptoms worse - the fatigue is worse on smokey days and the cough comes back and I feel very depressed. I don't exercise. We are told not to exercise especially outdoors on smoke haze days.
(as I write, the air is acrid and smoke haze is drifting into every crevice of the house)
Earlier this week I was feeling real fatigue so decided it's been a few weeks, I'll go to the doctor again as my symptoms are also consistent with walking pneumonia.
In other words, wondering whether I have two infections and only been treated for one.
She ordered tests again which I've yet to get the results. I asked her about the change from a morning to an evening person and the morning fatigue and she said it was a symptom of depression. I'm convinced the depression has gone, it started to lift around the 11 week mark. When I had the pneumonia I could not stop crying or playing music by Taylor Swift over and over and everything affected me emotionally and daily life and tasks were a huge struggle. This lifted around the 11 week mark of its own accord. I'm convinced it was biological and once my body started getting better, so did the depression.
I did not have helplessness and bleak future thoughts that normally go with depression. I just couldn't stop crying and I couldn't function, that's all. This stopped. So her assessment that it's depression, I don't agree with.
Here's my question: what is reasonable recovery time for pneumonia? I have read that at the 3 month mark, approx 52% of people over 50 (that's me) still feel ongoing fatigue and that this is the last symptom to vanish. But that's only one article. I'm looking for a benchmark. I have had some people say to me that recovery takes a long time and I'm pushing it. What is not helping is the toxic air.
Am I hurrying recovery? Am I pushing and in reality, it just does take this long? Or have I now moved into the TMS zone?
I refuse to think I now have CFS although annoyingly, my symptoms seem like it but I know from lots of reading that CFS is TMS so I don't even know why my brain would try and put that one over on me, because I've been on these forums and others enough to know that CFS is TMS. Still, my symptoms are ongoing crashing fatigue that has a bit of a pattern but is much worse on smoke haze days.
After this last blood test if it comes back normal I won't be chasing anything else t medical hough still cannot explain the cough. She can't hear anything when she listens to my chest.
So although I'm improved since August/September/October, there is still lingering fatigue on many days (not all, but particularly smoke-haze days).
TMS or my body just needs more time?
thank you for your insights
Miss Metta
