Psychology Today - Fatigue and Brain Injury
- ‘I’m So Over It!’: Brain Injury Provides Insight Into COVID Fatigue
- Fatigue: Does It Ever Go Away?
- Pandemic Stages Are Like Brain Injury Stages
- Is Mental Work the Same as Exercise?
We feel stuck in COVID fatigue. That’s what they’re calling the feeling of being in the middle of a marathon with no end. That’s how brain injury feels, too. But with a difference.
I’m stuck. We’re stuck. In COVID fatigue. The feeling of weariness, of being in the middle of a marathon that was supposed to have been a sprint, without an end in sight.
That’s what brain injury made me feel back in year two.
On the news, in documentaries, in uplifting stories, reporters told of long recovery times of a year for an elite athlete from injury. A year. A year for an elite athlete is the marker for all of us on how long we must endure an injury. They omit that rehabilitation for us does not reach the intensity, variety, and effectiveness of an elite athlete’s. People rally around; organizations support; courage and strength together bring athletes through.
Like a vast chasm, the reality of brain injury is that far from injuries to elite athletes. Like a shock of ice water, the reality of COVID-19 hits people used to health, unused to being excluded by reason of ill health or disability.
Brain injury flung me back into my early, early childhood and stuck me there.
