Overview

Attempting to wade the waters of medical expertise in search of help for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is to slide down the slopes of a slippery ravine. Medical opinion unable to agree within the confines of their scientific knowledge leaves the patient plunging into a crevice. No clearly defined diagnosis sees the sufferer being bantered in a vortex of varying opinions. Walking from surgery to surgery. Examining parts of their body yet discovered. All revealing marginally unusual markers without clear definition. Sending them seeking subliminal alternate therapies in desperation. Years down the line after much suffering the patient despite multiple disabling symptoms might be no further on than the day they started looking for help.

The symptoms display a variety of phenomena in each individual patient. So how do you decide between the plethora of treatments for specific components of the illness? Conventional prescriptions or holistic alternatives. Sleeping pills or valerian? Hormone replacement or nutritional advice? Vitamins and supplements or medicine? Virus, bacterial infection or dreaded illness? And the list of possibilities increases ad infinitum. Each choice providing yet another occasion to unbalance an already precarious body and immune system.

And if the choice of what route of special treatment to follow is difficult. Then the incredulous list of regimens of each individual Medical Consultant is equally impossible to vouch an opinion. Their dramatic variation so widely differing. Even more difficult is to find a doctor who is sufficiently interested to care specifically about you and your body in the most holistic way possible. Just struggling through these basic requirements can make you the patient sick.

To compound all the confusion in the initial stages of illness you the sufferer are trying to come to terms with the most frustrating of symptoms. In confronting your own doubts and fears the lack of advice is bewildering. Furthermore convincing those that are near to you of the absolute irrationality of your condition prove almost impossible. Tackling this is would be a challenge at any time but when you feel sick, exhausted, fuzzy-brained and in pain it is even more depleting.

The stigma of chronic fatigue syndrome should not be underestimated. Pull yourself together, psychosomatic symptoms, laziness, malingering, emotional weakness, yuppie disease, get over it, menopausal, depressed are all words you might here en route before you realize that you are not dreaming or going mad. In a world that likes labels an illness with no clear definition attracts much scorn. Maybe years down the line each part of this illness will have thorough research and each component will be given a name. But for the moment it is fragmented.

Discouragement sets in fast. Going around and around in circles. Glowing and well one moment and struck down and disabled the next. Very often you might appear to be insidiously well but inside the body will be full of betrayal. A perpetual conundrum to those near to you, unsure what day you are having and how to handle the situation. The final barrier for you is come to terms with drastic lifestyle and wellbeing change. There is a continuous feeling of before and after having been struck with the illness.

This site is not intended to give you a clear solution. Or to point you in the direction of medical expertise. It is to make you aware of choices. Of the possibility of finding a way to cope with what you have. To give you back some way of living your life without constant struggle. A way of coming to terms with what is now rather than what was before. A way forward to more clarity and calm.

The point is that if you do not try at least once you will never know if there was even a possibility of changing.