The Day My Energy Returned

For the first several months after completing the ribavirin and interferon standard therapy I still had a  very low energy level. It wasn't exactly exhaustion but it was a situation wherein if I did anything more than normal exertion it would wear me out and I would need to take a nap or at least sit down and rest. On a normal workday, I would work seven or eight hours go home and not be able to do anything in the evening unless I took a nap after work. If it were a particularly hard day at work I wouldn't really have the energy to do anything whether or not I rested after I got home. This gradually improved as the months went by but there was no breakthrough, there was no point when I felt that my energy level had returned to normal. It was just a holding pattern with very gradual improvement.

This continued until about mid-March of this year. At that point, almost 9 months to the day when I had finished treatment, it felt as though a switch was thrown and suddenly I had my energy back. I could move faster, I had a bit more strength, but more importantly I was not exhausted by doing basic physical activities. I'm not sure why this occurred when it did. Other people who have been through treatment have told me that you have to completely ignore the time frames that the medical professionals give you for recovering from treatment. Most of the literature indicates one to 3 months, some say 3 to 6 months. People who have gone through treatment that I have talked to state almost unanimously that you will not get back to normal until the same number of months have passed from the end of treatment that you spent in treatment itself. I was in treatment for 18 months and the amount of time passing before I began to feel a genuine return of energy or and w approximation of the way I felt before treatment began was nine months, so perhaps there is a correlation where one month of recovery for every two months of treatment will eventually return you to at least a semblance of your previous state. Whatever the case, I don't have a specific reason related to the treatment that would indicate to me why suddenly I began to feel better.

I still have a long way to go. I feel tired after levels of exertion that would not have tired me nearly as much before the treatment began. I also still feel some cognitive and memory deficits that I truly hope will go away as more time passes from the end of treatment. I still hold out the faint hope that my thyroid gland may eventually recover some of its function. At this point, being able to do what I can now is a wonderful thing.

I suspect the change may have had something to do with the time of year if nothing else. I began to feel better around the beginning of spring and two things happen around that time. Daylight savings time starts, and the weather begins to dry out and get warmer. The combination of the sun not setting a 5:30 p.m. and better weather no doubt did a great deal to energize my body and my mind. I don't think it's a complete explanation, but it must have had an effect. Another thing that happens at that time of year is that spring training for the baseball season is coming to a climax and the start of the  regular season is just a few weeks away. I have loved baseball since I was a boy and I'm sure that the excitement of the upcoming season must have given me some energy as well. My fantasy baseball draft was only a few weeks away and that always sharpens the concentration and brings on the energy.

So who knows. perhaps it was not some set period of months after the end of treatment that triggered the renewal of my energy but instead was simply a combination of longer days warmer days and the start of baseball season. Whatever reason or combination of reasons it was I'll take it. I was so tired of being tired, so tired of being somewhat depressed and so tired of having my muscles feel sore and weak that whatever the reason it's good enough for me.