Hi there my husband is currently doing a fatigue management course. Although he doesn't get migraines he has been left with chronic fatigue from his bi. We live in Herefordshire and have a local brain injury team (nhs run) which he was referred to by his doctor.
The course he is doing has been very helpful. He has to map his energy levels throughout the day to see if there's a pattern to his fatigue. Also practising mindfulness. For my husband if he tries to fight the fatigue he always loses. Sleep when you need to rest in the afternoon after 3 rather than sleep. He can manage an activity for 2 hours max anymore than that and fatigue starts to kick in which can set him back for weeks.
When was your bi? My hubby is 7 months in. Might be worth asking your doctor if there is a local brain injury team near you you can get support from.
blackperil ok heres how to manage fatigue official, from a carers course my wife went on.
so i do an activity of some sort in the morning, afternoon, evening take things easy, following morning take things easy, then an activity in the afternoon.
learning to meditate as jodr said relaxes you and, well for me, helps you look at the world in a different light.
take up a hobby, paint and draw, joke really because im not that good and neithers my work, but i enjoy it.
something i should of said at the beggining welcome to the family
This is about my own experience which is obviously personal, and everyone is different, so it may not work the same for others, and I'd like to stress that I don't want in any way to dismiss or criticise other ways of coping even if they haven't worked for me.
It's over 35 years since my TBI, and I've gone through many stages. For the first year or so, I slept a lot, but tried to live and work normally otherwise. I then just ignored the fatigue and lived fairly "normally", with periods of feeling fine and other times feeling run down. It helped that I was young and fit when it happened (early 20's).
After a very stressful period, I struggled, was diagnosed with M.E. (chronic fatigue) and attempted to manage my tiredness by resting and not overdoing things. After 15 years, I didn't feel like this was working - I was getting older and more unfit, so more fatigued than ever.
The result was that I changed my lifestyle. I got much fitter, started running, going to the gym etc. The bad days haven't gone away, but now on a bad day, I don't have to stop two or three times to get my breath back walking up the stairs. I'll even play tennis for two hours on a bad day and it doesn't mean I'll be exhausted for the rest of the week (as it used to mean). Maybe I'm shattered for the rest of the day, and don't feel good the next day, but I know it will pick up again. Almost always, on good or bad days, I will sleep 8 hours at night and an hour or more after lunch.
So I've gone from ignoring the fatigue to monitoring it and giving it too much importance in my life, to now not ignoring it, but working hard to stop it affecting my life too much. Looking back, I've always had ups and downs - "good periods" when I've felt almost "normal" and bad periods. The bad periods are still there, but I can cope with them now, and the good periods are fantastic.
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