Thinking At Half Speed

Tag: chronic pain

  • Why an Hour of Conversation Can Leave Me Unable to Think

    There is a moment I know well. I am mid-conversation — talking, listening, engaged — and then, with very little warning, everything stops working at once. Not just the words. The movement. The thinking. All of it collapses into what I can only describe as a super slow heap. It is not tiredness in any…

  • Words Without Meaning

    I came downstairs this afternoon. My partner was talking to me. I couldn’t understand a word. Not the sentences, not the context — just the occasional word floating through, disconnected from everything around it. She was talking and I was watching, and none of it was arriving. There was frustration on both sides. Talking to…

  • The Scoot

    I hadn’t been out for a couple of weeks. My own fault, but the sun was shining so we went — me on the scooter, my partner alongside. It was properly spring. Blue skies, birds singing, a water vole in the stream, squirrels everywhere, and the trees all out in their pinks and whites. Joyous.…

  • Measuring Fatigue — Why It’s Harder Than It Sounds

    If you live with a chronic condition, someone has probably handed you a questionnaire about fatigue at some point. There are several recognised scales in clinical use, and they’re not all the same thing. Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) — nine statements, each scored 1 to 7. Developed in 1989 for MS and lupus research. Designed…

  • When the Scale Goes to Eleven — Living with Extreme Fatigue

    Today I did a fatigue assessment. The Fatigue Severity Scale — nine statements, each scored 1 to 7, where 7 means strongly agree. The clinical threshold for significant fatigue is a mean score of 4. I scored 7.0. Every question, 7. The scale was designed in 1989, primarily for MS and lupus research. Its job…