Abide

Disability Testing

Look What the Cat Dragged In has a great post up today: Why Disability Testing for FMS is Often Misleading: Advice for FMS/CFS Patients and their Disability Team. Lots of good information for those in the process of diagnosis/ disability application.

Zen

One of the effects of this illness, which I suppose one could consider a good thing, is that I can no longer rely on habit to accomplish the mundane tasks of my day; I must Pay Attention. Otherwise, I will turn on the coffee maker without adding water; pour orange juice into my cereal; and wear my shirt inside-out all day.

I am forced to live in the moment, attentively.

Indiana Doctor Gives Hope to Fibromyalgia Sufferers

Via ImmuneSupport.Com:

An Evansville, Indiana physician is going to the American Academy of Pain Management conference in San Antonio Wednesday, to present what could be a breakthrough finding. He suspects the chronic pain of diseases like fibromyalgia could be caused by a series of viruses . . .

Pain specialist Dr. David Johnson realized the fatigue, aches and chills many of his patients describe are the same symptoms that come with a case of the flu. So he had an idea: What if he tested them for some common viruses? "I went through and listed about three or four viruses, and didn't even know if the labs could test for them, and my gosh, they came back positive."

He eventually came up with list of 17 viruses and found that his fibromyalgia patients were all testing positive for anywhere from three to nine viruses each. Dr. Johnson believes their immune systems aren't recognizing the viruses as pathogens and as they steal cell material to replicate, the patient is left with a host of ailments. He's prescribing anti-viral medications to try to suppress the viruses, which can take years . . .

So far, 26 of Dr. Johnson's patients have tested positive for up to nine viruses. He says six are responding well to anti-viral medication.

Besides fibromyalgia, the treatment is also helping sufferers of chronic fatigue and irritable bowel syndromes.

The article goes on to list the viruses Dr. Johnson tests for.

Journal Excerpts

27 Sept:

Pain again today, but today I have no obligations; I can do nothing.

28 Sept:

Morning after morning, displacement dreams -- homeless, jobless, petless -- between homes, moving, vague acquaintances. This room is covered in a sheen of grey dust, less visible in the artificial light of evening than the pale light of morning when the sky is light but the sun unseen.

Already I can tell that today will be better. A few more days of nothing & perhaps I will feel willing to live again.

29 Sept:

I am feeling better than I have in months -- is this the new meds kicking in, after a month -- or just the usual ups & downs of the illness? Or three sunny days in a row; or the full moon . . .

First time in ages I don't want to say, I'm tired. But here I am now, hoping for such luck tomorrow. & tonight, I swear, the moon was smiling.

03 Oct:

A few days of relief, and this morning, pain, my-old-friend.

Chronic fatigue rates fell immediately after Sept 11 attacks

From Medical News Today:

Researchers studying chronic fatigue rates in the United States saw a dip in the syndrome immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, suggesting a possible “fight or flight” effect may have put some people's fatigue into remission, a new study finds . . .

Heim says the study results may be skewed, if fatigued individuals represented a disproportionate number of people who dropped out of the project after the attacks . . .

A number of potential explanations exist for their findings, which are published in the current issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. One possibility is that the terrorist attacks may have distracted the attention of those suffering from their fatigue or altered their perceptions of fatigue . . .

Heim and colleagues call for more research to determine potential psychological or biological mechanisms for their findings. They also note that their study was designed only to note an association between Sept. 11 and CFS rates; more research is needed to prove whether the terrorist attacks affected CFS rates . . .

Also, since their study ended only three months after the attacks, it wasn't long enough to detect new cases of CFS that may have been related to the attacks . . .