Here's a multiple choice quiz for you. Why is Sylvia so tired? Is it because:
a) She has chronic fatigue syndrome
b) She has chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome
c) She has myalgic encephalomyelitis
d) She has post-viral syndrome
e) She has adrenal fatigue syndrome
f) She is tired of waiting for doctors to name her disease properly
g) She has been staying up late reading
The answer: All of the above!
Actually it's not Mystery Disease Awareness Day, it's CFS/CFIDS/ME/etc. Awareness Day, and the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, who appears to have suffered from this disease of many names. In case you aren't familiar with this amorphous illness, it is a chronic, incurable, debilitating disease that weakens just about every physiological system, particularly the muscles, the brain, and the metabolism.
Researchers are making new discoveries all the time but are bogged down by chicken-and-egg-syndrome—which comes first, the disturbed sleep, the burned-out adrenals, or the lactic acid build-up? Does the immune system crash and then over-react, or over-react and then crash? Is it caused by viruses, or are viruses merely opportunists? Theories abound, but at least doctors are getting into the lab instead of trying to convince themselves that since they don't know what it is it must be all in the patients' heads.
Here's another quiz. When you meet someone with ME/CFS/CFIDS/etc., should you:
a) Encourage them to get more exercise
b) Encourage them to get more motivated
c) Encourage them to get out more and socialize
d) Ask if you can bring them a casserole and vacuum their house
If you guessed (d), congratulations, you're a decent human being! If you guessed wrong, don't feel too bad, many doctors have too, and not just about this disease. They have a pretty bad track record when it comes to denying the existence of "new" diseases they don't understand yet. It happened with tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis, polio (yes, some doctors actually thought those poor kids were faking to get out of school), AIDS, and now ME/CFS/CFIDS. Canadian doctors have taken the lead in describing the disease seriously, but as far as I know only one properly studied treatment (good old fish oil) has been found to be effective for one symptom (memory loss). We have a better idea of what we have, we are more likely to get disability pensions now (though not without a fight), but we're still hooped. C'est la vie.
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