What Is It Like To Suffer From Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

The most common complaint from people who have been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is an overwhelming and extreme fatigue. A fatigue that is not associated with a busy day at the office or from running a 10-mile marathon. This is a fatigue that can be felt upon waking; a fatigue that has nothing to do with physical activity. The fatigue can keep you from living a normal, active life. It can even interfere with normal activities like getting dressed, making meals, or being able to function at work or school.

It is difficult for those who suffer from symptoms like depression and pain and who have CFS because a so often they can not tolerate medications due to experiencing side effects from taking them. This increases the anger over the disease because you so badly want to get rid of the symptoms and often times the very medications that could alleviate your symptoms cannot be taken due to experiencing side effects. This anger can lead to more depression and a vicious cycle can begin that just aggravates some of the symptoms of CFS like anxiety, depression just being tired of the whole situation.

Another common symptom of CFS is memory loss. This can be especially devastating for young college aged students who rely on remembering what they have read or heard in class in order to do well on tests and receive good grades. Think of all the things you do each day that require your ability to remember – things like where you put your car keys, heck how about where you parked your car? Every day we rely on our memory to complete tasks like picking up kids from after school activities, making purchases, completing assignments at the office. Most of us take for granted having the ability to remember to do these things that require memory. A person with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome who is suffering from short term memory loss cannot do even simple tasks that require the ability to remember instructions, events, assignments or things they have heard or read. Often times the ability to concentrate is also decreased adding to the problem of short term memory loss. Those patients who have had brain scans have often been told that they have lowered blood flow to the brain; which could explain the concentration problems and memory issues.

A lot of CFS patients seem to agree that they experience weight gain, perhaps as a result of not being able to be as active as those without CFS. Some have found it helpful to decrease sugars and carbohydrates from their diets and to be sure to eat balanced nutritious meals.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients deal with chronic pain. The pain is felt in their muscles and in multiple joints in their bodies. Chronic pain can easily lead to a person becoming depressed. Most of us who have suffered an injury can relate to not being able to wait to feel some relief from the pain. Those who suffer from CFS do not receive that relief. They live every day with pain as a constant companion. The pain can vary in intensity and can even change from mild to more severe.
Sometimes knowing what others go through can help us to be more compassionate to them when we come in contact with them. It must be a difficult disease to deal with whether you are the patient or someone who cares about the person with CFS. Those who suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome deserve our support and our empathy.