Hitting The Wall – Post Sepsis Syndrome

The phrase Hitting The Wall – Post Sepsis Syndrome will resonate with ALL sepsis survivors. In fact I’m not really sure I would need to explain to them what I mean by it, but I’m gonna write about it anyway.

‘You’re going to be very tired after this’!

That’s a phrase I heard a couple of times in hospital from the medical team, but that was all. No elaboration on what exactly that meant – probably because unless you have first hand experience of it, you might not actually know! So I had no understanding of how absolutely and utterly wiped out I’d feel for days, weeks, months and probably years after Sepsis (I’m currently 6 months Post Sepsis as I write this).

Its the extremity of this ‘tiredness’ and fatigue though – it is chronic, it is chronic fatigue. You just don’t ‘feel tired’, its like all of a sudden it hits you bam smack in the face and your whole body is affected.

It’s like I’ve been filled with lead!

It’s like I’ve been hit by a bus!

It’s like I’ve run head first into a brick wall!

Sepsis fatigue takes your breath away, your whole body aches, you feel heavy like you are weighted, you can’t move, you don’t want to speak (and I love to talk) and you are just totally and utterly exhausted.

Other fatigue

Now I have to say that I’ve experienced extreme fatigue before, perhaps not quite as severe but equally deliberating. Years ago in my early 20’s when I was recovering from chronic Irritable Bowel Syndrome and had lost loads of weight, I took me around 5 years to build myself back up. I often had ‘fading spells’ in the middle of the day and sometimes felt faint. My mum always said that I ‘lacked stamina’ but I now know looking back that that was also chronic fatigue. You can read about my IBS struggles HERE.

During both my pregnancies I also suffered from extreme exhaustion – I know lots of mums can relate to this. Where you just feel utterly wiped out. This feeling is close to Post Sepsis fatigue but nowhere near as severe. There were times when I was pregnant that a wave of exhaustion would hit and I would literally feel like I needed to fall asleep right then on the spot.

Post Sepsis fatigue is different, I would go as far as to say sometimes it is paralysing and its the ‘weightiness’ that accompanies it. It does literally feel like I’ve been injected with lead and that I’ve ‘hit the wall’.

#hittingthewall #postsepsisfatigue #sepsisvitality #sepsisrecovery #lifeaftersepsis #ibs #ibsvitality

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