Managing MPN Fatigue During the Holiday from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

MPN Care Partner and Patient, Jeff and Summer discuss how to manage fatigue during the holiday season. Summer tracks her and ensures she’s walking daily. Jeff shares to never overschedule yourself and make sure you prioritize your rest.

Transcript

Jeff:

Hi I’m Jeff. 

Summer:

Hi I’m Summer and this is Zelda. Say hi. Say hi, Zelda. 

Jeff:

And we’re your Patient Empowerment Network Leads for the myelofibrosis blood cancer, myeloproliferative neoplasms. And we’re here to talk to you today about fatigue. Oh my gosh, Summer, we’ve got improv in half an hour. 

Summer:

We’ve got two Starlighters parties. 

Jeff:

And we’ve got a Christmas party on the 11th. 

Summer:

And we’re going to go to a concert and the Nutcracker Ballet. 

Jeff:

All of those things happening during the holiday season. 

Summer:

And Christmas shopping. 

Jeff:

Oh, Christmas shopping, I forgot. That’s exhausting. Are you going to be able to handle it? I know fatigue is a real symptom of it, of myelofibrosis. 

Summer:

Well, it’s a symptom of it as long as you handle it. But I always get eight hours sleep and on my phone, my Apple Watch records my sleep. And I get a 100 sleep score. And it makes a huge difference. Plus I go to the gym and I do exercise and walking for one hour every day to get my 10,000 steps. 

Jeff:

And the exercise helps with your fatigue? 

Summer:

Yeah, it makes me tireder. Of course. 

Jeff:

So, you sleep well and you track it so well. She’s even got me tracking my sleep and I don’t have myelofibrosis. But we check in with each other to see that we get enough sleep. And we’ve also adjusted our schedule, haven’t we? 

 Summer:

Yeah, we have our performances at our theater a lot more matinees which is good because older people, no matter what, like to do things earlier anyway. 

Jeff:

So, we’ve made significant adjustments in our life to deal with the fatigue portion of myelofibrosis. And we’ve made even more in this holiday season by scheduling things correctly and doing what you’ve just described. 

Summer:

I mean, at 1:15 we’ve got a rehearsal, improv rehearsal. Then we have people that want to check our theater. Then I have another comedy rehearsal and Jeff has a guitar singing rehearsal. 

Jeff:

We would encourage you folks to do the same thing in this holiday season. Don’t over schedule yourself. Get enough rest and have a happy holiday. Bye from Jeff. 

Summer:

Bye from Summer. Bye from Zyada. Say bye bye. 

Jeff:

We’ll see you next time.