Hell’s Marathon: a brief history of the start of an endurance challenge I didn’t sign up for

In mid-October 2018, I got up one morning and went for a brief run, two miles. It exhausted me. Still, I took a shower, got ready for work, ate breakfast. I went upstairs to brush my teeth, and upon entering the bathroom, eyed the plush blue rug in front of the sink. I lay down on the rug and curled up in the fetal position. I wanted to stay there forever. Completely fatigued, I left my manager a voicemail that I would not be coming in that day and crawled back into bed. Little did I know I would not return to the office, or normal life, for about seven months, a couple diagnoses, many tears, boatloads of supplements, medication and multiple alternative therapies later.

The crushing fatigue didn’t come out of nowhere. There were events, signs and symptoms that led to that morning, curled up on a bathroom rug. Some were obvious, some were ignored, some I’d been trying to deal with unsuccessfully. Some contributing events happened years earlier. It’s a messy story, one that doesn’t lend itself to tidy narration, and one whose pieces I am still sorting through. In this post, I am sharing the events that seemed to have set the stage for one of the most difficult periods of my life, a time that my husband and I dubbed Hell’s Marathon.

In September 2017, I began a five-month taper off of the antidepressant, Lexapro, that I had been taking for anxiety for about 12 years. I felt good physically, mentally and emotionally, and was worried about taking something long-term. I was looking forward to entering my fifth decade drug free (I turned 50 in October 2017). I had my doctor’s blessing and followed a taper plan I had used to get off Zoloft in my early thirties. I felt good during the taper and didn’t experience the side effects, at least not yet, that are common during SSRI tapers.

I was completely off the drug by spring, and so happy about that that I shrugged off some subtle changes I had noticed. I felt moody, but attributed that to hormonal swings due to perimenopause. I started having recurring anxious thoughts about the big earthquake anticipated to happen on the West Coast, but attributed that to media coverage. My body seemed more tense than usual, but everyone experiences muscle tension. Overall, though, I felt like I was healing and could cope with anything, until the death of our 15 year old orange tabby, Boo, in May 2018.

Boo had experienced bad sinus issues earlier that year, but we did not know he had an unrelated cancer until about three days before his death. It seemed like one minute the vet told me she could feel a large mass in his abdomen, and the next minute, I was bringing him in for euthanasia. He appeared to go downhill in days, though in reality, he’d likely been sick for months. His death hit me like a ton of bricks; I was devastated. I experienced deep grief and cried a lot, but I expected it to pass with time. I was really fond of that cat.

As the summer went on, however, I just couldn’t shake my overwhelming emotions. My anxiety was also out of control, but it didn’t feel like normal anxiety. My mind was in in constant rumination and concentration was difficult. The only way I can describe it is that my brain just seemed too fast. As this was going on, I also started to experience extreme perimenopause symptoms. It felt harder than usual to elevate my mood with things I enjoyed such as singing, running and hanging out with friends. At least my sleep was good – despite everything, I slept well that summer. It was my refuge and I found myself going to bed earlier and earlier over the summer.

There was a bright spot that year, a three week trip to Scandinavia that September to travel to Denmark, Sweden and Norway with friends living in Sweden. Because of my frequent crying spells, high anxiety and significant perimenopause symptoms, we considered not going on the trip, but I really wanted to go. Though I was loathe to do it, I went to see my doctor, who prescribed Lexapro again. I took a small amount of it and spent the rest of the night with a pounding heart and wasn’t able to fall asleep until 4 a.m. I didn’t take it again. I went next to see a naturopath, who prescribed hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and recommended some supplements to help with my brain chemistry. One of the supplements included St. John’s Wort. The HRT quickly eased many of the perimenopause symptoms and the St. John’s Wort supplement lifted my mood somewhat. It also gave me energy, but not in a good way, and started to affect my ability to sleep well. At the same time, I started to notice a fatigue setting in. Things that used to be easy for me, like a short hike, began to feel physically and mentally daunting. This concerned me, and I tied it all back to the St. John’s Wort. I quit taking it days before our flight to Copenhagen, relieved that I would at least be able to sleep well again and deal with my issues when we got back from our trip.

We flew to Copenhagen without a hitch, and that first night at our friends home in Sweden was when I realized that I was not going to be returning to the pre-St. John’s Wort baseline.