Oh, how I can relate to that. It's called Post-Exertional Malaise, or PEM for short. It's a delayed response of the body to exertion of any kind, be it physical, mental, or emotional. Sometimes the delay is as little as a few hours, but sometimes it can take days to set in.
I hate waking up feeling sick, that feverish feeling where the world is off kilter and neither the eyes nor the brain are willing to focus upon anything other than not falling off the bed. Like most people with chronic autoimmune problems it's not unusual to wake up feeling worse than I felt upon going to sleep. This more often happens when I have had a good and active day before. Sometimes I can go for as long as three days of feeling reasonably good, being able to operate comfortably function as I putter throughout the day. Then I get nailed for it. Payback is always a bitch.
Sometimes it happens suddenly, as if my energy plug got pulled.
Sometimes it comes on slowly, building up un-noticed until I land on my butt unable to get back up again.
Sometimes I just wake up feeling flushed and flu-ish, fogged and confused, weak and wonky.
Sometimes it feels like a floodgate of pain has been opened and the mess dumped upon my head all at once.
(not my artwork, author unknown to me)
And the worst of it is that a person can never know what it was that was the "over doing it" line so as to be able to avoid doing it again.
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