RLS vs Comorbidities

If you are unlucky enough to just be diagnosed with restless legs syndrome (RLS) as a singular condition, please accept my sincere commiserations. Having an illness that turns your life on its head can be taxing and soul-destroying some days.

If you suffer from RLS and a whole host of other conditions, it sometimes seems that life is just out to get you.

RLS makes everything worse

Try spending 24 hours a day in chronic pain whilst having had no sleep for the past few days. Or dealing with fatigue alongside a condition that refuses to let you sleep. RLS can make everything seem worse.

Like lying in bed to try and rest sore or painful joints, just when your legs decide to break into a rendition of Riverdance! You are struggling with a massive migraine brought on by muscles in your neck, and your legs have other ideas! Let's go sit in a light-flooded room and watch TV! Talk about frustrating!

I am not sure if RLS can sense if you are having a bad day, stressing more, or are considerably more tired. It always seems to rear its ugly head at the most inopportune moments, making a rough day feel horrendously worse.

My legs never seem to tire

Has anybody out there managed to move home with RLS? Have your legs always felt worse, or do your legs ever let you just sleep? Lugging boxes for days on end should tire your legs out, but ours never seem to tire enough.

It is definitely a case of "Which came first?" The comorbidities or the RLS? Do our other conditions make us so tired we could sleep 18 hours in a day, or does our RLS wear us out so much during the night that we could spend all day in bed the next time our bodies let us sleep?

A slow creep or a sudden onset?

Did your RLS creep up on you? Or did you actively recognise the symptoms as being something not quite right? I was wondering if it was a "Wallop, here you go!" type of all-or-nothing, or a few bad nights one week leading to a stressed visit to your doctor pleading for help?

Lying in bed right now, I cannot even remember a time where I didn't have to give my legs something to do, even during the day. I soothe myself by rubbing my left foot onto my right. It has even gone so far that I have rubbed a callous onto my right foot!

The one question no one should ask us

Do you envy others in your life who just sit still or lie under the duvet and fall asleep (without having to sacrifice a goat to the gods!)? When you have had a really awful night, wearing a line into the carpet whilst chanting the spell to open the 7th gate of Hell (you have to try everything!), your household awakens to you glaring at them with a look that could make them drop dead on the spot?

What did they ask? "Did you sleep well?"