Dear Diary: 24 April 2022

Today has not been the best day. I went to bed around 11pm last night, but didn’t get to sleep till after midnight. I woke up once for the bathroom and then slept till around 7:30am so not the worst, but not the best. As usual I felt like I hadn’t slept. My shoulder was really hurting – partly why I got up – and my legs were really aching too. I sat up for a while and had some breakfast and then had a long soak in the tub. I find the water really relaxing but the effort of doing this and the hot water also tired me out.

After drying off and sorting out clothes, I sat down for a while trying to ignore the tingling and sharp shooting pains in the fingers of my right hand. Around 11am I went back to bed as I needed to lay down, standing and even sitting up had made me light headed and the efforts (small as they were) had left me as weak as a day old kitten. I had an hour’s sleep and then got up and got ready to go out.

I was really pleased I managed to get ready to go out to the meeting and enjoyed that a great deal but was wiped out by the effort – and felt “constricted” by the mask I was wearing in the hall. I got home around 5pm or so and would have gone straight to have a nap but my wife was making tea/dinner and we were having burgers outside. It was nice to sit in the sun for a while (although it was very windy).

While I enjoyed spending time with the family – I needed to sit quietly for a while and let me food go down and then I needed to lie down again (2nd short nap of the day). I am not sure what time I went to sleep – but I remember waking up around 8:30pm and dragging myself out of bed and downstairs – as we were having strawberries and cream cake for desert!

Plus sides of the day: Getting to the meeting, Spending time with family on two occasions, strawberries and cream cake!

Altogether I think I spent around 9 and half hours asleep counting last night and naps. I feel like I slept around 3 hours. At just after 11pm now, my shoulder is aching with a steady throb, my legs are aching, and my ribs hurt to touch. My right fingers are not hurting atm but I also am getting sharp shooting pains in right side that remind me of what I have read about sciatica.

I do feel a bit stressed atm partly because I am unsure why I have felt so much worse the last couple of weeks (this weekend has been about as bad as I’ve got). I’ve had three or so tasks I needed to get done this weekend – none of them particularly hard. I’ve got one done. The others I will have to try and do while also working tomorrow. I also hoped to do some work this weekend as I had not managed mentally to deal with my staff performance reviews that are due in the next few days and I still need to prepare and meet with the three members of staff. I am definitely playing catchup and I have no spare capacity physically or mentally to catch up. I will just have to do what I can and that will have to be enough!