TRIPLE Whammy!

It would be difficult to fight off one assailant. Can you imaging fighting off three assailants at once? That happened to me today.

When I deal with just pain it’s a matter of distraction. I can ignore a certain amount of pain if I’m sufficiently distracted. I’ll wear ear buds and listen to a podcast, audio book, or music. So long I’m hearing something to which I can pay attention I can forget about pain for a while.

When I’m feeling particularly weak I move slowly, calculating my effort for what I want to accomplish. I pace myself. It works for me well enough.

If I’m both in pain and weak the combination is more multiplicative than additive. It’s a double-whammy. It’s more painful to work slowly but fatigue prevents me from working speedily. Still I can power through for a while. It requires mental commitment to the complicated process managing both pain and fatigue.

Today I was a bit foggy due to taking a Benadryl to help me sleep last night. When that happens at the same time I’m feeling pain and fatigue then that’s a TRIPLE whammy! I don’t have the cognitive capacity to manage both pain and fatigue. It’s about the only time I shut down.

I was still able to get a very few things done. I delivered a bookshelf to our son and his family, I helped Georgia paint a door frame. I helped Georgia get sliced apples on the food dehydrator. I took out the trash to be picked up.

Here it is just after 5pm and I’m in bed. My pain is finally very slowly decreasing and becoming more manageable. My fatigue isn’t an issue right now since I’m not exerting myself. And my foggy thinking has mostly dissipated. I’m still not clear-headed enough to do any software engineering. (I’m not the software engineer that I once was.) When I’m clear-headed I can accomplish a few things on one of my computers or servers.

This “triple whammy” is difficult for me. I have much to accomplish here and now I’m rendered incapable to do much of anything. Not much bums me out but this is, this triple whammy.