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Maybe you have a physical issue that has yet to be diagnosed. I have no idea, but I can give you some of my history after retirement and perhaps it will help. I retired at the start of 2011 and my wife and I took off in an RV. We traveled and traveled and did photography every day. We did lots of hiking/walking and way more physical exercise than any time in my life.
We stopped traveling at the end of 2012, rented an apartment and started looking at buying a house again. Within 2 months, it was as if I had been hit by a pile of bricks. I could barely make it through a day without a morning nap and another mid afternoon nap. Both times I would sleep really hard and had a long hard time waiting up again. Within a few more weeks I was in the hospital. I was like a slug with a very low heart rate, low body temperature and extreme fatigue. Over the next few months I saw every specialist and had about every test available including dozens and dozens of blood tests. No adrenal insufficiency or any other endocrine disorder, no lymes or any signs of infection. So as a last resort I tried antidepressants. Those made me even more fatigued to the point where I was barely awake a few hours a day.
Months later, summer came and we bought a house. I magically recovered, at least to a large extent. I did a lot of remodeling work. Then winter arrived and my energy again waned. I tried going to the gym but that barely helped. In the Spring I took off in the RV and quickly recovered.
Bottomline: when I am engaged, passionate and both mentally and physically active, I feel better. So I am doing more travel and photography again. I have been doing archery for the past couple of years and I started to paint with pastels. I take a lot of classes in art, photography and related areas.
I hope you find what works for you. I suspect you will find winter a challenge.
I'm 65 and very tired, yes.
If I find out there is nothing to be done (as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), I will learn to live with it. This is the least stressful time in my whole life and I need to really look at that.
You posted this while I was typing. As I tried to explain, I would bet it is that lack of "stress" that is the issue. Or better yet substitute "challenge" for "stress".
Maybe you have a physical issue that has yet to be diagnosed. ...
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I hope you find what works for you. I suspect you will find winter a challenge.
Thank you for your post. I have followed your discussions and know that we are not similar in the need for challenge/activity/goals etc. I am actually looking forward to winter as I won't look at other people bicycling and running around in athletic gear all the time. I don't ski and that's the major thing, at Telluride, some 35 miles away. I look forward to reading and resting and attending some presentations.
One eastern friend told me I'd make a good monk, and I sort of see living here in that light. Have not had ego about accomplishment or goals or such. I appreciate this poster's suggestions, but we are not alike in that regard.
Earlier in this thread, I said that I'd had mono three times (ages 15, 37 and 49) or what I think was mono, might have been exacerbations of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or some such auto immune mystery. This current episode feels quite similar (although not as severe as my episode at age 37, where I was non-functional for two months). So I am not overly considering anything that just popped up here and now, except for maybe the cumulative stress of my many years of night shift stressful work. One reason I retired when I did was because I felt so wrecked from the stress and hours, like something was broken.
I am waiting to rule out concrete diagnoses. There is no definitive way to rule IN the autoimmune disorders that I am considering. It is very mysterious.
Thank you for your post. I have followed your discussions and know that we are not similar in the need for challenge/activity/goals etc. I am actually looking forward to winter as I won't look at other people bicycling and running around in athletic gear all the time. I don't ski and that's the major thing, at Telluride, some 35 miles away. I look forward to reading and resting and attending some presentations.
One eastern friend told me I'd make a good monk, and I sort of see living here in that light. Have not had ego about accomplishment or goals or such. I appreciate this poster's suggestions, but we are not alike in that regard.
I do not know if this is something you might consider. My wife takes mindfulness meditation classes. She seems to think it helps her physically as well as mentally. It has breathing and posture related exercises. Here is an article from Huffington Post on it.
I'm so sorry you're feeling such fatigue and so wiped out. Reading your story, it's clear you're highly competent and goal-oriented and have been greatly and admirably self driven for years at work; then building a house across the country, and buttoning up your former life and moving yourself and the dogs across the country. It would have brought most people to their knees. The fact that you have a history of mono, it's highly possible that the cumulative stress of the move has brought on a bad flare of Chronic Fatigue. CF is very real and still not well understood (although this is improving). Dr. Montoya at Stanford is one of the experts on it. There is also a foundation backing research on how the HHV-6 virus is implicated in it: https://hhv-6foundation.org/patients
Rest, eat well, rest some more, breathe the fresh air, rest, read good books, drink lots of water to stay well hydrated, sleep deeply. The long winter may be a balm.
As to ruling out, if it were the altitude you could maybe test that by trying some of those canisters of oxygen sold on Amazon (each one gives 100 breathes or something like that). If you instantly felt better with oxygen, it might mean you just need more time getting acclimated. And buy a finger pulse oximeter. Perhaps these ideas are a stretch but several people commented on altitude.
I enjoy and have learned much from your writing, and hope your strength returns soon.
Thank you for your post. I have followed your discussions and know that we are not similar in the need for challenge/activity/goals etc. I am actually looking forward to winter as I won't look at other people bicycling and running around in athletic gear all the time. I don't ski and that's the major thing, at Telluride, some 35 miles away. I look forward to reading and resting and attending some presentations.
One eastern friend told me I'd make a good monk, and I sort of see living here in that light. Have not had ego about accomplishment or goals or such. I appreciate this poster's suggestions, but we are not alike in that regard.
I seem to remember giving you a warning on this when you were making your plans. Anyway my stories and experiences are only an example. Don't consider yourself unique. You can check the medical literature and statistics yourself. After adjusting for age effects, retirement is associated with death, depression, and a wide variety of serious diseases. Instead of reading books, you might be better off trying to write them. Anyway, I am sure we will hear the ongoing story.
Still following this discussion and it reminds me of the exhaustion I went through after my own retirement from doing very stressful work for 20 plus years in healthcare myself. It is like my body just untensed after all those years of psychological stress and physical stress. And it took months and months to rest and recover and have any energy at all.
I likened the experience to that of shoring myself up emotionally to do very draining work and then *BAM!* I no longer had to shore myself up. Doing that in our job role took a lot of energy and we don't realize it while we are doing it.
At 63 I have also learned not to sit and rest too long or i fizzle out fast and fall back into a tired place. I walk my dogs and do a 3 day a week part time job that is very physically active and those energize me as well.
You know the older we are the longer it takes to recover from stresses and perhaps before now you had not been off the stress train of work long enough before to experience that rest/vigorous activity cycle bottom out. Now you jumped off that work/transition stress train and you are feeling that bottom wall of fatigue. I know I did and you will find a balance. It just takes time.
Stress is a strange thing that is ill defined and means different things to different people. Working nights is hard on the body, call it stress if you want. Working in a locked psych ward can also be considered stressful. Both together would wipe out most of us. BDL managed both and succeeded at both to the point where "stress" hardly applies. These were more like challenges where BDL succeeded and coped and excelled. Now they are gone and instead there is taking it easy, reading and finding some trivial social interactions. What do you think is going to happen?
You can look at this many ways. BDL explained one approach. She needed a complete change and some rest. The rest has progressed to concerns about fatigue and health. No surprise.
Adrenal insufficiency? That is unlikely to become a medical Dx. But it might be more true than the OP wants to admit. Sometimes when an adrenal junkie is cut off, there is a feeling of insufficiency. Whoa, I forgot, the OP is different. Fat chance. Your body is telling you something else. It is not my body, it is yours that is talking.
If you don't mind my asking, what town do you live in in Colorado? I'm thinking of relocating within the next few years; though I'm not yet anywhere making a definite decision whether I'll leave (eastern MA), much less where I'll go.
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