One of the most bitter complaints people have about living with chronic hepatitis is that they always feel so tired. This is especially common during treatment. Of course, everyone gets tired and usually this just means it's time to slow down and go to bed a little earlier each night. But heppers talk about a tiredness that never seems to end. Imagine how you feel after the end of a long day spent mostly on your feet working hard, with few breaks. Now, imagine feeling this way after you've just woken up--after a good night's rest. It's almost like sleeping had no effect, and yet, many heppers talk about feeling just this way.
Talking about fatigue is hard for people with hepatitis because everyone knows what it feels like to be tired. "So, you're tired," someone might say. "Just take it easy for a while." But it's hard to describe the intensity of fatigue that chronic hepatitis can bring and especially hard trying to convince people (without hepatitis) that just "taking it easy" doesn't do the trick. An interesting study in the Journal of Clinical Nursing tried to document just how tired heppers feel. Here are some of the responses (paraphrased):
- It feels like you're coming out of an anesthetic.
- It feels like you're weighed down with concrete.
- It's a tiredness you can't fight.
- It's an exhaustion that makes you feel defeated.
- It feels like your body breaks down.
- You feel that your body isn't your own.
- You want to do things but you can't.
- It takes 2-3 hours just to get going in the morning.
Many heppers would appreciate other people trying to understand what they're going through--and some seem to be affected more seriously and go through so much more than others. A good place to start is realizing that when they say they're tired, it's not from laziness or boredom. It's a feeling so deep that some describe it as "a heaviness where you feel your body will collapse under its own weight" (from article cited above). Unfortunately, at this time, there's not a lot that can be done about fatigue. However, here are some tips worth trying that may help mild fatigue and offer some relief.
You can add taking a nap and feeling worse than rested.
You can also add, It feels like you have been hit by a Mack truck. The fatique is the worse! I sleep 12 hours at night only to wake up and feel like I have not slept a wink. Then I will sleep most of the day only to sleep once again by eight in the evening. The sycle just continues. I force myself to work out and can do 30-45 minutes of walking on the treadmill, but, it doesn’t help increase my energy level. I wish someone could find out why we feel so exhausted all the time. Does the virus take that much of a toll on your body that your body expends so much energy trying to fight off the virus that it leaves you with total exhaustion day after day after day?