27/07/20 Fatigue & blood numbers

A rather low-energy day yesterday, perhaps bordering on real genuine fatigue rather than just feeling dog-tired. Intermittent rain in the morning ruled out going for some outdoor exercise, so I didn't do a lot apart from doze in my chair downstairs. But - and at last - had some interest in the old microwave oven I've had for sale on Gumtree, and arranged for the buyer to come and collect at 17:00. That made it a bit of a "now or never" so I made slightly early tea and got out for a short but fast (by my standards) roll down to Fountain Road and back. Better than nothing, and on the way back I had a call from another Gumtree possible buyer. Strange co-incidence, after a couple of weeks with no interest at all. Anyway, that's another £40 towards the cost of the oil tank repair...

As for the 'is it / isn't it fatigue?' question, it's a likely enough side effect of the pills but maybe I've been letting the slightly low red cell and haemoglobin numbers prey on my subconscious mind a little so I checked them against the first set of blood results I have in full, taken 18/11/19:

18/11/19 Red blood corpuscles: 3.74 (normal 4.4 - 5.8)

17/07/20 Red blood corpuscles:  3.91 so I'm actually a bit up over that time.

18/11/20 Haemoglobin: 118 (normal 130 - 170)

17/07/20 Haemoglobin: 126 again, up a bit.

O2 saturation (I just checked) is 96% as usual.

So whatever the cause of this tiredness is, it's not oxygen deprivation. The Lenalidomide / Revlimid "Patient Leaflet" quotes tiredness as one of the likely side-effects, but associated with a drop in red cell count and although I've had that (a small one), it goes back to way before I started taking Lenalidomide. I'll leave things as they are for now, but I think I'll make it a main topic for the next 'phone consultation with Dr.Ch if it doesn't get any better.

Of course, as always with me, I get to about 23:30, have a shower at midnight or just after, and then feel more wide awake than I have done all day. The curse of being a natural night owl...