26/11/09 - Recovery Time - "Down-Time"

Greetings,

Thought I might have a little chat about this thing called recovery, or down-time as I call it. This is the period of time which you spend getting back to where you were after strenuous activity or after illness or injury. In my case, the down-time, can be directly related to what I have been doing and what the reason for the down-time is.

In the case of strenuous activity, depending on what it was, the length of the down-time after this will be. This is actually the main reason that I had to give up heavy fighting in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), the down-time was simply just too long. It would take me an entire week to get back to where I should be, and this is not good. It kinda cuts down the amount of training you can do for starters. A really hard-fought tournament for fencing should take me about two or three days to recover in comparison, hence me sticking with fencing.

One of the problems with recovery time with regard to FM is the fact that FM likes to "play" with the nerves so you don't know whether you are feeling like crap because of the illness, injury or activity, or just because you are having a "bad day". This tends to cause all sorts of problems in gauging whether you have actually recovered from an injury or not. Perfect example, some time ago, about eight weeks actually, I managed to crack a rib. Now, the nominal recovery time for such an injury is about six weeks, due to the FM this has actually taken eight, and it is still a little tender.

In the case of ilnesses, it is usually dependent on the illness, but there is a similar result. Lots of confusion as to whether or not there has actually been a recovery done or not. This is not really helpful because the doctor will tell you that the illness has gone, but you can still feel bad due to the FM being a pain in the butt about it. When it comes down to it, extra stress placed on the body or the mind of a person with FM will cause all sorts of issues.

So, with all the confusion about down-time with regard to FM, and whether recovery has actually completed or not. A person can feel that they have recovered and try and go and do things. If they have properly recovered, everything is good. If not well, you can just start adding days and weeks on to the recovery time. This can cause all sorts of problem when you can't tell wether you feel rotten because you need more recovery time or it is just the FM playing up. If I play it "safe" I swear that I would not get out and manage to do anything.

I tend to play the good old "FM roulette" with regard to this. I give the down-time a certain period of time and once that is done I go back to what I should be doing. In the cases where the down-time has been completed, everything is good, when it is not, well, it beats sitting around doing nothing I can tell you. I honestly would rather be out doing stuff than stuck at home doing nothing. I do tend to push myself a little harder than I should, but as far as I am concerned, the enjoyment that I have doing it far out-weighs anything else.

Cheers,

Henry.