A Pipe and a Keyboard

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (or CFS) is a nasty ailment.

It suffers (sic) from many drawbacks- 

• It has no outward symptoms.
• It is difficult to diagnose.
• People are reluctant to admit to ‘feeling tired’ all the time.
• It seems to have many and varied associated complaints.

The main symptom of CFS is a feeling of unnatural fatigue.  By unnatural, I mean a tiredness that is completely out of proportion to the exertion.  The simple act of doing some mundane every-day chore can leave the victim feeling washed out for hours, even days after. 

Because of its lack of outward symptoms, the sufferer is frequently accused of ‘laying it on’, ‘malingering’ or just plain good old fashioned ‘being neurotic’.  Why would an outwardly healthy person insist on a day in the armchair or a day in bed just because they went to the shops, if they weren’t being a hopeless hypochondriac?  In fact one of the biggest hurdles faced by a sufferer is in convincing friends, family and colleagues that the condition exists.

There is a lot of confusion between CFS and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or ME.  The two terms are frequently confused and interchanged.  Symptoms are essentially the same, though there are differences (ME is considered to be pathological, whereas CFS is considered to be neurological).

I have had the condition now for a few years.  Whether I have CFS or ME is open to debate, but for the sake of argument, I’ll leave it at CFS for the moment.  One way or another, it is a pain.  Literally.

It is estimated that around 4% of the population have CFS, though I would imagine this figure would be a lot higher as many are reluctant to report their fatigue, and many more are just dismissed as the aforementioned neurotic.

I thought it might be of some value to cover the topic of CFS on this site.  I haven’t seen many sites examining the topic.  Because of its stigma, many people are reluctant to talk about it, so I thought a piece of open writing might be of some help?

Filed under: CFS on January 16th, 2010