The weight of fatigue

I feel really tired.
I feel exhausted.
I feel utterly wasted.
I feel beaten.
I feel shattered.

All these expressions go some way to describe how I feel right now since coming out of hospital earlier this week. But none of them exactly describes how I feel because the feeling of exhaustion I have goes so much deeper, it goes to my physical and emotional core. 

Fatigue....in itself this word sounds a little soft, not as full on as say, 'exhausted'. However it is the clinical word to describe my condition right now. 
Tiredness can be sorted with one or two good nights' sleep. Fatigue is different, fatigue takes over your entire body and as a result of this your emotions and mental wellbeing too. It eats away at your confidence and makes things looker darker than they are. I wake up in the morning, get out of bed and am immediately hit with an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. My legs ache walking down the stairs, my heart is pounding in my chest, I have to rest half way across a room. I have to sit whilst cleaning my teeth, I can only eat using a fork (the other hand holds my heavy head up) I shuffle from bed to sofa to bed with limbs that feel like they are made of stone. 
My doctor warned me I would feel wasted after the transplant but nothing could have prepared me for this.

 Maybe because I love to be outside, I love to be doing something physical, this prison me and my body are in feels even worse, more unfair and more desperate... I don't know. All I know is that the feeling of watching my body waste away, the frustration of not being able to do even the simplest tasks all have a profound affect on my emotional wellbeing. For the last nine months or so I have been upbeat and positive about all of this, now I find myself for the first time looking into a very dark abyss with seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel. It's a strange new place for me to find myself, it makes me feel sad and uncomfortable, it's not a place I have known before, it's not a place I have the mental tools to handle. 

It is unclear how long this fatigue will last; weeks, months, for some it can be years! I am hopeful that I will be able to shake it off sooner than that though!! 
Recovery also sort of depends on being able to do some gentle exercise and being able to eat. I have lost a scary amount of weight over the last few weeks. Enough weight that my body has gone into starvation mode which means that I have lost the reflex to feel hungry. I am eating small meals all through the day but each mouthful is a chore. I know that each mouthful I force down is helping me to get stronger but my stomach feels permanently full and of course my taste is still severely altered. If this sounds like a vicious circle that's exactly what it is. I have no energy so I need to eat, but I find eating hard because I have no energy to build up an appetite!! It's a tough one, all I can do is keep drinking the build up shakes...(yuk!), keep eating Rachel's delicious meals bit by bit and hope that I can break the circle. 

I know so well that feeling stronger mentally, feeling happier about my recovery is the key to all this. Then maybe I will be able to eat, to put some flesh back on my bones and most importantly get back outside doing the things I love to do.
Its hard to really feel a difference day to day but I just have to trust that with each day I am moving in the right direction slowly but surely....one press up at a time.