Most of us have good days and bad days. What makes a good day a good one? What do you spend your time/energy on during a good day?
I had to realize that when I say I have a good day I totally mislead people and should just stop using it altogether. Because having a good day simply means not having a bad day (or a terrible day). Even on good days I'm still symptomatic, I'm still not my old self but I can somewhat manage. It's not actually a good day at all, it is only "good" compared to the bad and terrible days when I really can't do much, both physically and cognitively. The "good" days are the ones where I focus my tasks that need to be done. If for some reason I have to do certain things on a bad day, it is pure torture and I really cannot trust my cognitive capabilities if something important/offficial etc needs to be done that requires actual thinking. I also go on short walks in the neighbourhood on a good day, just to be outside and move a bit but on bad days, not a chance. Otherwise I absolutely don't do all the things I would love to even on a good day. I would say on a good day I'm probably at the lower end of mild, on bad days I am at the lower end of moderate.
Agreed still symptomatic, for me on a good day I am at the upper end of mild, good for me is being able to take part in a social activity out of the house such as watching my team play football or lunch with friends. eta probably should have said I once every couple of weeks for a big activity like this
What characterizes a good day for me? They're the days where I'm able to do at least one useful activity of daily living, at least one fun activity, and also stick to my healthcare routine (taking my pills, pacing, eating healthy) without it becoming painfully difficult. These are also the days where I'm able to keep these different priorities in my head and plan things reasonably well without being overly rigid. Good days become possible when the symptoms are not too bad. Good brain function is important. For a normal person, experiencing my good day would probably quickly lead to an appointment with a physician to figure out what is wrong.
19 years after falling sick with very severe ME and now at moderate level I can now get the sewing machine out and do a bit of sewing! I still cannot make a garment in one day, it takes me weeks to finish something but still, it is an exuberating feeling to be able to do something I love again. This is just one example on a good day which I do have more of now.
A good day is a low pain day. A communication day. A bath day. A real reading day. I read most days but only occasionally can I actually really do it. The best day is going outside. Not only because I absolutely have to. Just to be out there and take it all in. Being autonomous.
A good day is a less bad day, as @Wyva says. It's being out in my powerchair, wondering at nature, somewhere with few or no other people. Or it's being able to go for a good swim at the leisure centre. A somewhat less bad day is enjoying the cricket or a book or a puzzle, and being able to do an hour of music practice. I get a lot more of these than "good" days.
For me at the moment a good day is a day without a migraine headache, currently that is three days out of five, in a fairly regular 2day/3day cycle. On the migraine free good days I don't need to close my eyes and pretend to be a jellyfish without a brain every few minutes to prevent pain building up in my head, as I must do today to write this. On a good day I am still housebound and need to be very careful with how much activity I do or I will crash and get PEM 24 hours later, (which now includes a pounding headache as well as heart arrhythmia, IBS, viral recurrence, adrenal episodes, irresistable sleepiness, cognitive dysfunction including brain fog, emotional lability like euphoria and irritability, if it gets worse then cognitive disruption involving hallucination and paranoia, rigors, etc). To avoid all that I have to rest most of the time and if I am careful and lucky I can pace my way through light activity such as hoovering a room, say one room in the morning and one in the afternoon and then rest for the remainder of the day. Or clipping a few metres of lawn but not both, or cooking for the freezer to make life easier on worse days but I can't do that as well as hoover on a good day, or it will become a bad day, if you see what I mean. I usually pick one task per day and try to get it done with careful pacing. If I do too much it takes 3 days to a week of rest to recover to my rested state. I can do a fraction of what I used to be able to do but at least I am not in constant pain. It has taken the best part of an hour to write this, I must stop to get to sleep on time or it will mess up my day tomorrow.
A "good day" is me trying to learn something while laying in bed, feeling like I have done an intense full body workout from doing 0.1% of the cognitive exertion a normal person makes in a normal day of school, and then being completely bedbound and feeling poisoned for many days or weeks - forgetting most of what I have learned. As you can tell, I don't have any good days.
