So what are my symptoms?

Besides the obvious that there is a great feeling of being tired that really doesn't go away, there is alot more to CFS than most people realize. I think the hardest part about living with CFS is that most of the time I don't look sick so its hard for most people to understand and remember that there is something very wrong in my body. I remember dragging my but out of bed and going to work before I had any idea what my problem was, getting to work and barely remembering the drive. Every break I had I would just have to lay down and close my eyes, now remember before this I was always on the go, I didn't stop to take a break, I would crash. I started having trouble remembering little things that I knew, work became harder and harder as part of my job was to think on my feet and be able to adapt including implementing strategies that supervisors had given me. I just wouldn't remember until someone would remind me, and then I'd just feel stupid, it was like "I knew that! What's wrong with me?" Then there was further embarasment when I would meet someone knew and I swear to you two seconds later the name would be completely gone from my brain. Previously I had a great memory, especially for names, I could tell you my childhood friend's name, dog's name, from twenty years ago but now I couldn't even introduce people to each other.

I was now in the land of fog, brain fog. It became increasingly harder for me to focus on even doing one task, now navigating though something I had done a hundred times before became difficult and I would forget steps. I would get so frustrated with myself and with others because they didn't, and for the most part still, don't understand that my brain is in there somewhere and I was trying but it just wasn't working. I had employers think that I was actively not listening and just slacking off, even after the diagnosis. Like I said in my previous post it came to the point where I just couldn't work anymore and I took a leave of absence.

So I tried to sleep as much as I could but the harder I tried, the harder it became to sleep. It came to the point where I wouldn't be able to sleep until 5 am, 6 am, 7am, 8 am and my fiance would be getting up for work in the morning. I do have to thank my wonderful man for sticking through this with me, we starting dating not long after my migraines started and we have been together for five and a half years now. They wern't always easy times, and he hasn't always been as understanding or as helpful as I would like, but he's still here and that says alot. Suddenly I'm very emotional, the love he has shown me is bringing tears to my eyes, but I still have days where I want to strangle him for not putting his dishes in the dishwasher or taking the garbage out. Anyway I will get into this more in a later post, back on track.

I would sleep then until 2 or 3 pm. I would force myself to get out of bed, or rather my cats insisted (if you have ever seen the Simon's cat cartoon where the cat wakes his master, its just like that). I would get up, go to the bathroom, and go lay on the couch for pretty much the rest of the day. I would try to research on the internet as much as I could to see if I could find things to try to improve my condition. One day I googled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and it came up with an article about a young man that had been very much like me, and now he was suffering just like me. He had CFS and he was on the Marshall Protocol. I would like to go further into what the Marshall Protocol (MP) entails at a later date when I explain the different treaments I have found available and the reported pros and cons of each. I was excited to have an idea of what might be going on and that there might be a cure, since everthing I had found so far said CFS is not only incurable but also difficult to treat to get any improvement. I spent the next couple months struggling to even get of the couch, my body felt like it was weighed down by cement. I was so tired that I couldn't get up to get something to eat, this probobly didn't help my energy.

Looking back at that time in my life it was like I was a breathing corpse. I couldn't function in pretty much any capacity. I couldn't work, I couldn't paint, I couldn't go to a simple family gathering, I couldn't do anything that I previously enjoyed. Looking forward I probobly won't be able to do most of what I could before, my old life effectively is dead and gone and most of my friends and relationships have died along with it. I mourn my old life and I mourn what my life could have been without CFS, but I go on.

Hi, sorry people I'm just learning how to make a blog and I'm not that technologically savy. That being said let me try to continue where I left off.

In University my main mode of transportation was riding my bike, living in Lethbridge where the chinook blows in and its not unusual for the wind to be around 50 km/h gusting even higher. I biked pretty much all year round, even in the winter if the snow wasn't too deap. I worked part time (almost full time) and went to school full time, I would joke that what I was doing was the equivalent of two full time jobs pluss what social life I could have. My first two years of university I was a double major Biology (premed) and Art. So 2-3 classes with a lab on top and atleast one art studio class. I was a busy girl and my mind was constantly on many things at once, I'm sure this contributed to the insomnia or was atleast part of the reason. I'm sure I'm forgetting alot of details but I will get to those on a later date as I get into my 7 stages of grief at the loss of my old life, she's gone.

Then spring of my second year of university I kept getting a really sore throat on and off for months. I finally went to the doctor and she said I had mono. I disagreed at first I wasn't anymore tired than normal but sure enough the tests said thats what I had. It took a couple months but I got back to feeling normal. Half way through third year I switched my major to Neuroscience, I found the combination of psychology, biology and chemistry fascinating, didn't really want to be a doctor anymore, I didn't like the classes enough to work my ass off to get the grades I needed. A year later loving the classes I decided to go for a CO-OP position to gain real work experience in my field. For those of you who don't know a CO-OP is a partnership where the government pays half your wage and the employer pays half, it counts toward your degree. I didn't like working pretty much minimum wage jobs anymore. Oddly enough I got hired in a Molecular genetics lab working on winter wheat, not exactly brains and behaviour.

The lab I worked in was in a federal research station and they were still going through the process of cleaning the building and making it healthy (this included removing asbestos, fun hey). Right before I started I came down with a virus that messed with the connection between my eyes and my equilibrium, I constantly had the spins but I finished my finals and tried to heal before starting my new job. Also right before this I began getting numness in my left thumb tip, curious but docor couldn't really say what it was. I recovered but shortly after starting I came down with Mono for the second time, this time it nearly knocked me on my ass. I had a hard time performing my job duties and they offered to put me at part time but I couldn't afford to live off the wage decrease so I slugged through and had pretty much recovered by the end of my 8 month term with them. Then I moved to another lab that was located in the basement of the same building. The air circulation was horrible and it was regularly 30+ degrees C, not to mention the lack of removal of the chemicals in the air we regularly used. October of that year I experienced the most excrusiating headache, I couldn't move my neck. The headache was a week and a half strait while I was packing to move into a new place on Halloween. Crappy, yes people health wise I'm a lemon.

My first MRI happened a couple months before this, results had been inconclusive. That annoying numb thumb had been concerning enough to warrent this now I needed to see a Neurologist. Several months go by before I can see and expert, besides the excrutiating pain in my head, sometimes I would see a rainbow around lights. Well the neurologist diagnoses me with Atypical migraines, and orders another MRI just to make sure, came back the same as before: non-localized foci in the right hemispere, for those who don't speak Doctor I had tiny dead spots all over the right side of my brain. The nurse assured me that this wasn't abnormal in Migraine cases, OK then.

I worked in that basement lab for almost a year and a half and then my term was up. I moved on and decided to work more in the field that I was interested in, I started working with brain injured adults. I moved up relatively quickly in the agency. Shortly after starting my new position I came down with mono, again. Thats 3 times in something like four and a half years, mono likes me ALOT. This time I take two weeks off work to try to help me recover however when I returned to work I became jaundiced and required another 2 weeks off from work, upon return to work this time I returned at only part time and gradually tried to increase my hours but I was very fatigued this time and found it very difficult especially with all the gossip and back stabbing going on in the workplace. I decided to leave and become a Behaviour Therapist/interventionist. I began working with children on the Spectrum of Austism. I worked part time but was easily talked into taking on more than was wise for me. I was slowly recoving and was getting close but in the Spring of 2008 I crashed and crashed hard. I thought that it was mono again but the tests showed that it wasn't and I was far to tired to work, so tired that it was hard for me to think and my short term memory was not good. It took a couple months and batteries of tests, finally in October of 08 I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndome. Whoopie I had a name to call it now, where was I to go from there?

Hi everyone

So today is kinda crappy, my energy level is very low but for some reason I felt like today was the day that I wanted to jump in and share my experiences with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. First I would like people to know what my life was like before this illness. I was always one of those people that was constantly on the go. It was hard for me to sit and do nothing, infact I was usually doing about three things at a time. I was always really active: biking, walking, hiking and working out were things I loved to do. I loved hanging out with my friends and family, was always ready to go do something like dance at a club all night long.
I must add that I have had insomnia since I was about 13 but never really let it bother me, I just fuelled up on coffee and kept going. It wasn't unusal for me to go on about 3 hours sleep a night starting on and off in Junior High school and increasing gradually through High School and into University