When it comes to dealing with chronic fatigue during the holidays, I urge you to leave the magical thinking to Santa and his elves. Whirling into the season like you have been issued a new body is going to lead to only one place. A melt down. So don’t go there. Here are some tips that I’ve found useful in keeping my MS related fatigue under control during the holidays, and stopped me getting any accidents abroad.
Make an Energy Budget on your calendar. Plan each week’s events with your fatigue levels in mind. Decide realistically what activities are top priority and accept only those invitations that you can comfortably accomplish. If need be, err on the side of being self protective and conservative. Work on tasks collaboratively with other family members and friends. Most things like decorating, baking, cooking, and writing holiday greetings are actually more fun done with others. Let everyone help, especially the kids. It may mean that your Christmas tree will look a little different from the vision you had, but I’ve found that things are more fun shared and memories are made in the process. Speaking of holiday greetings, I propose that you adapt the much maligned form letter to ease the job of communicating with your holiday list. These can be done tastefully. Make it one page, avoid creating a brag rag by focusing a paragraph on something personal about each family member’s news. Don’t list purchases and acquisitions but do talk about events like graduations, new careers, births and deaths. Start early and do a few cards each day, and add a short handwritten personalized note that focuses on the recipient. Consider a Stuff Free Holiday. Most of us have way more stuff than we really need. Consider a moratorium on unnecessary giving and channel the expenditure towards a good cause. Focus on the spiritual part of the tradition that you celebrate versus the commercial manifestations. Or at least pare it way down. This decreases shopping, wrapping, and schlepping stuff around. It saves you energy and does something worthwhile with your dollars. Travel carefully. We tend to start scurrying around as soon as the Halloween pumpkins start to spoil. Slow down. Consolidate errands. Hopefully, if you’ve attended to tips one through four, you’ll be going fewer places and enjoying yourself more at the stops you do make. Plan rest times into your trips to regroup.

As November rolls into December it is easy for those of us with limited energy to get overwhelmed and turn into Scrooge impersonators. There are so many places to go, things to do, and occasions to mark. These are some of the things I’ve found that help me keep my chronic fatigue stable. I encourage you to try some of them and keep your holidays merry!

By: Eileen Schweickert

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A diagnosis seems like a never ending list of things-to-do. On top of doctor’s appointments, lab visits, trips to the pharmacy and other treatments there are the changes that take place in your day-to-day life stripping you of energy and focus. There are three things to consider when facing a life-altering health diagnosis that can give you energy and help restore your focus.

Build Your Immune System

Your immune system is the army that fights disease. This is the root of your personal defense system that works to regain balance in the body. Balance is a concept we in Western Culture don’t pay enough attention to so we keep doing more of the same hoping for different results. On the other hand Chinese Medicine looks for imbalance within various organs of your body. The goal is to restore the body’s natural balance making it uncomfortable for illness to reside within the body. This is only one way of building your immune system.

There are mind-body alternatives such as meditation or guided visualization. These methods look at relieving stress and getting you to eradicate the negative energy that may be an obstacle to your health. Visualization takes you on an inner journey and the example is that of playing Pac Man shooting and destroying the intruders within your body. Obviously there are other types of visualization, but this one gets many people interested because it seems to active in nature.

Don’t Own the Illness

You are not your illness. Your illness is something you have, not something you are. It is a component of your current life, but not your identity. There is a difference between saying “my diabetes vs. the diabetes”. Don’t make the illness feel welcome in any way, shape or form. It is an unwanted guest; so don’t become familiar with the disease itself. Learn everything you can about being the illness’ biggest adversary.

When you allow the illness to define you, automatically you feel defeated. It’s the difference between you having an illness, and the illness having you. Your decisions and actions will be different in each of these situations. Having control over your health is empowering and let’s the mind-body connection shift into high gear. It puts the illness in it’s place, as an unwelcome guest.

Forgive Yourself

You are not the cause of your illness. We are a culture that feeds on blaming people for their misfortune. Forgiving yourself for not being mindful of your health is different than taking responsibility for you illness. It’s important to remember that being gentle with yourself as you go through treatment softens the harshness of treatment. Whenever you show yourself compassion, you give the treatment an added boost in fighting your illness.

Treatment isn’t only medication and machines. You do have control on how potent these medications or treatments impact the body by the importance you give them. When we make these internal shifts we fortify our treatments giving us the opportunity to validate our efforts toward wellness.

By: Greg Katz

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