Cfs: My Story

My story

I fell ill for the first time in August 1997. At the time I was in peak psychological and physical shape and I was preparing to graduate from university looking forward to a long and successful career in my chosen field of employment: a special forces soldier in the army. I remember being ecstatic with enthusiasm and training regularly and hardly to achieve this goal. I had recently arrived in a foreign town to start enquiring about the requirements to commence my military service later on.

Suddenly, I woke up one morning with a very sick feeling: headache, sore throat, severe weakness, malaise, swollen glands and acute sensitivity to light and sound. I figured at first I had the flu, and then started suspecting a bout of mononucleosis when I realized I had no fever and that this illness persisted well over three weeks.

After about a month, I returned to my hometown for a holiday, recovered quickly and forgot about the accident. Then I returned to college to begin my final semester before graduation. Firm in my decision to join the army, I downloaded the Navy Seals preparatory training program and started to make myself fit for the job. This meant daily runs of up to 10Km, up to one hour of swimming and loads of training in the gym. Within a month I was in top physical shape again. Then again, I woke up one morning with a sore throat and a feeling of malaise. I ignored it and kept training through it, but started getting worse and had to interrupt my sessions after a week of suffering.

I could not help, but notice the similarities with the previous occurrence and by now I was convinced I had something worthy of serious attention. I went to see a number of doctors and received a number of equally disappointing answers: “it’s just a sore throat” or “it’s all in your head, you need to relax” were opinions that I heard frequently.

I spent many hours in the university library and on the internet trying to figure out what I had. At first I though I had exagerated with fitness and overtrained. Eventually I came across CFS and could not avoid noticing that it totally fit my condition, despite never receiving an official diagnosis from any doctors (mostly because no doctor I ever visited believed in the actual existence of this condition). Alternative medicine doctors could do no better. I was highly frustrated, stressed out and worried that this condition might not get better any time soon and interfere with my career plans.

Weeks and months went by and slowly I started accepting the possibility of abandoning my idea of joining the army. Once it stabilized, my particular version of CFS was relatively mild, allowing me to keep working and studying, but physical training was out of the question. Even a 15’ run could knock me out for 2/3 days afterwards. After about one year, tired of waiting, I gave up on the army idea completely