Really crushing fatigue

[Diedrewas]

I’m so lost with this and really just want others to talk to.

Ive been suffering on and off with the most awful fatigue for over a year now. I’ve had heart checks and blood tests and all normal. I’m not sure what else to do.

It’s made my world shrink down as some days it’s so bad that I can’t even follow a conversation. I’m like a different person because of it.

When I say fatigue I mean extreme flu like where just moving an item feels like a mountain climb.

Has anyone else had fatigue like this, what did it turn out to be? The only other symptom that seems to accompany it is sometimes feeling off balance/woozy? Not quite dizzy. Floaty?

My blood pressure is generally quite low but always has been on the lower end. I’m 41, no other issues.

I have pernicious anaemia.
I cannot process B12.I need B12 injections every three months.
The symptoms you describe are how I fell when my B12 is due.
Please get a blood test for your B12 you may need folic acid as well.

@Maverick66 Thanks, I will ask about it. I know my nan had that once and she was very poorly.

For me it was a combination of anemia, low b12 and long Covid.

Do you have access to your blood results?

I felt like this a few years ago, I couldn’t even walk to the end of the street without feeling exhausted and wanted to sleep all the time. I was eventually diagnosed with low vitamin D and B12.

pernicious anaemia had hertitary links. Once you have it you always have it but it can be treated with b12 injections.

Low iron for me too. I take Spatone every day, two sachets during my period, it has made a huge difference.

Make sure you get tested for Vitamin D deficiency and thyroid antibodies. They may test your thyroid function but not all Dr's ask for the AB reading.

I have chronic fatigue syndrome (ME-CFS) and "extreme flu" more or less sums it up. This is a diagnosis you don't want, however, so I hope it's something easily treatable as PPs have suggested above. You get tested for all that, and more, during diagnosis.

Long Covid is pretty much the same, with a better chance of eventual recovery. Did you have Covid in the weeks before this started?

I have this too, but seemed to start after a bad cold, so it's being called post viral fatigue. It's horrific.
My blood results are normal, and I actually ended up going to see a private GP who looked through them and said the same. So I think they'd have picked up on anything that was within normal margins but looked suspicious.
I can't follow conversations either, it's physically painful.

Hormones and long covid for me. I started feeling exhausted at the same age as you. Long covid made me feel as though I should be in hospital sometimes, I felt so ill. Hope you get to the bottom of it. Have you had your thyroid checked?

I second this. I've had low iron on and off since dd5 was born and felt exactly how you do, as though I'm not in the room. I was prescribed tablets three times a day which irritated my stomach and didn't really help, so was put on a 2 week course of loading injections, one every other day, and I honestly felt like a new woman after! I finished the course in April and I still feel great

I’d also say even if your haemoglobin was normal, did they check your ferritin? My Hb is always fine but when my ferritin drops I feel dreadful. People telling me I look ill, breathless on exertion, palpitations, crushing fatigue. Improves on iron tablets.

Thanks everyone, these are all the lines I was thinking along but gp says blood test normal or no action required.

I had Covid last year and maybe this year briefly.

I have had low ferritin and anaemia before which was sorted easily with ferrous sulphate so that was my first thought but gp said ok, I do have my results @Changeiscomingthisyear

I’ll screenshot them tomorrow if anyone would mind casting an eye over my last set of results don’t trust myself not to anonymise them at this time of night!

Keep pressing them obviously something not right.

Could be low iron, under active thyroid or something else.

I felt similar and was fobbed off then a few months later found to have something else I won’t say as its rare and might be outing.

Even if your bloods are "normal" it doesn't mean it's right for you. Everyone is different. Definitely worth trying a liquid iron supplement in the interim, it won't hurt. I was once told my prolactin levels were within a "normal" range. Meanwhile my boobs were producing colostrum/milk, and I was definitely not even remotely pregnant or with a young child.

If sounds very much like ME/CFS. Like PO
I also have it. Please go to your GP and ask if uou might have it.

For further info and help, visit ten ME Association

meassociation.org.uk/

I recognise your symptoms - both from a time when I suffered from severe anaemia (resolved by blood transfusions, iron, and surgery for the underlying cause) and more recently after a completely unexceptional Covid infection, which involved about ten days of actual illness and then four months of, as you describe it, crushing fatigue. The latter has had a somewhat devastating effect on my wider life - causing more than a year of stress and disruption.

Go back to your GP and get tested for everything. You really cannot, and shouldn’t have to, carry on like this.

My tiredness is linked to perimenopause. Hormonal insomnia combined with brain fog and bone crushing tiredness. Constant yawning, could barely string a sentence together. HRT and sleeping meds made a huge difference. I'm still a bit tired and groggy in the morning due to the sleep meds but I feel much more awake during the day and have bursts of energy to get stuff done.

@dizzydizzydizzy and anyone else in the same position...after what time period do they stop saying post viral fatigue and say ME/CFS?

Mine was tiredness and weakness, the start of Parkinson’s ( prob had it 5 years at that point)

You need to have had symptoms for 3 months to get an ME/CFS diagnosis. I had been backward and forwards to my GP complaining about all sorts of symptoms like dizziness and sore throat and being exhausted every Saturday after the working week. Then the has covid. I got over the actualu infection quickly but spent weeks afterwards mainly in bed. So I got my diagnosis quite shortly after I’d had covid.

I've been like this since a virus in March and feel like it's the inevitable conclusion, but no one has mentioned it!
Sorry to hear you've been so unwell, it's rotten

Possibly long covid