Rest.
The rest required when suffering with chronic illness can often be staggering. Shocking. Hindering.
Necessary.
If you also happen to deal with severe fatigue - from your body constantly fighting - the amount of rest time is magnified exponentially.
Sometimes it feels like you are sleeping away your entire life instead of living in it.
But it is part of the package.
Often, it can become difficult to know when it is better to stay in bed, and when it is better to encourage someone to get out of bed.
Some days can be improved with a little bit of movement or fresh air. Other days a little movement or fresh air can make things a lot worse.
Today has been a bit of both.
I was feeling especially ill today - a little flu-ish to be honest. It could just be a bad Crohn's day, but it feels a little different.
Anyways, I thought staying in bed today might be the best possible option for me.
But RJ convinced me to get out of bed and play some cards with him. See if it helped at all to get out of bed.
And it did!! My energy improved a bit and my nausea subsided a little bit. I even ate some dinner and we played cards for almost an hour!
Then I thought I would push myself even further. I thought that maybe a little exercise/stretching may improve how I felt even more! So I did a short yoga session - with meditation and really focusing on my breath and my most comfortable stretches. I also made sure not to wear any pants that were too tight around my abdomen.
And yet...
That turned out to be a bad idea.
I got some decent shots of my yoga practice, but I am definitely worse after the activity. I am shaky (not in the good I-got-a-great-workout way), I am more nauseated, I dry-heaved for a while, and I am on the verge of tears.
It is always a struggle to know when I should be just remaining in bed, or if remaining in bed is simply inducing cabin-fever sort of symptoms. And then, if getting out of bed and being active is going to make things better or worse.
Unfortunately, every single day is an experiment in what my body can handle.
Today it turned out that staying in bed ALL day would not have been the best idea, but that spending more than an hour not resting was also too much activity.
Orrrrr maybe I just have the flu and I am scrutinizing the day a little too closely.
I might never know.
