Tightrope #spoonie

Are you healthy? Pretty much? Imagine you're standing, there, wherever you are just now - living room, office, street - and someone runs over and gives you a shove. Of course, you're shocked. Sure, your arm might hurt a bit where they pushed you. But basically, you're OK. Your feet are firmly planted on solid ground.

But it's different for me, and other spoonies like me: people with dreadful, crippling fatigue caused by a long term illness such as MS, CFS/ME, lupus, cancer etc. You have to imagine we're standing on a tightrope, already a little wobbly. The result is that when we get that unexpected shove, we start wobbling furiously, and quite possibly fall off.

This, of course, was an analogy. The tightrope is our fragile health. The smallest thing - a few hours' shopping, or a sniffle that you'd shrug off - can send us crashing to the ground and put us in bed for a week.

And while we're walking our eternal tightrope, so much of our concentration is taken up with juggling: how much energy do I need to save to go out tomorrow? Is this just a bad day or am I getting a bug? I hope I can sleep tonight! How long can I put off the washing up, to save energy?

If you have a spoonie in your life...please don't push them?