Damnit! I have just realised that it is nearly two weeks since I was last here.

One of the main reasons for this is a deterioration in the old M.E.

M.E. manifests itself in many ways, one of which is Restless Leg Syndrome.  Naturally in this day and age of acronyms, this is generally referred to as R.L.S.

R.L.S. is a nasty complaint in that it has an all pervasive effect on life.  During the morning, it is completely absent.   Around mid-afternoon, the first symptoms show up.  There is a mild tingling sensation in the calves and thighs which is easily ignored.  However as the evening progresses, it gets worse.  The sensation soon becomes like a series of constant electric pulses through the leg muscles, or else there is a sensation of dozens of ‘things’ crawling around inside the legs.

There are two very strange things about R.L.S.

The first is that the symptoms can be more or less instantly eliminated by standing up.  Also, leg movement helps a lot, so I seem to spend my evenings either standing around as if I were a stranger at a party, or else I am sitting frantically rotating alternate feet from the ankles.

The second, and more serious is that the symptoms are instantly magnified tenfold if the sufferer relaxes.  Any attempt at an afternoon nap is out of the question, as the legs are soon crawling, jumping and generally being extremely irritating.

Naturally, symptoms are very bad in bed, where one is at one’s most relaxed so sleep is difficult.  Even after getting to sleep, the legs continue to twitch during the night, so sleep is disturbed.

The result of all this is that the R.L.S. sufferer gets progressively more tired.  The sufferer feels tired during the day, but can’t get a nap.  Exhaustion sets in at night, and sleep comes, but it is disturbed.

There are no cures for R.L.S.  It is something that has to be endured.  There are medications that can relieve the symptoms, but they generally have fairly drastic side-effects, in my experience.

During the day, therefore, the brain is tired.  We all know what the thought process is like if we are short of sleep, but to the R.L.S. sufferer, this is a constant daily curse.  Thoughts are sluggish and there is little incentive to do anything that requires a bit of brain power.

M.E. manifests itself in many ways, such as the fatigue and occasional pain.  Of all of them,  R.L.S. must be the worst though.