At the onset of the illness I was 55 years old, happily married with two wonderful sons in their 30’s. Successful in my job as a high school English teacher for 25 years, I was also the Humanities Supervisor and the district’s writing guru. I served as K-12 Writing Coordinator and taught Composition, Creative Writing, Advanced Placement Language and Composition, and almost every other course in the English Department.

I advised the high school literary magazine, started a peer-tutor writing center, and attended and often led writing workshops and professional development sessions. I published articles about teaching along with some poetry and a short memoir of my mother-in-law. I also mentored adult writers.

I have been sick with ME/CFS since a flu shot in 1999. After experiences with many, many doctors, I am currently seeing Dr. Ray and Dr. Klimas at the Center for Neuroimmune Disorders at Nova Southeastern University in Florida and taking Immunovir and Atenolol.  My condition has clearly improved since the early years, but I still experience significant relapses and suffer from (sometimes severe) Post-exertional Malaise. In between the relapses, however,  my “well” times are longer and “well-er”.

A Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Chronicle

(Posted from the earliest to the latest blogs in descending  order)

• “But You Don’t Look Sick”
• Images From the First Years
• The Odyssey: Fourteen Years of Doctors. . . and Counting
  
• Antidepressants, Talk Therapy and Reich: The Early Therapists
  
• Seeing the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Specialists
  
• Monkey Poop: The Alternative Medicine Practitioners 
• Lyme Literacy
• Crashing! 
• Marriage
• My Wheelchair
• Two Therapists
•  No Stone Unturned: More Medical Maneuvers
• Tilting South – See Dr. Klimas in Miami
• Nuturing and Friends
• My Job
• Christmas in Hawaii
• Is It Time to Give Up Trying? Thoughts at Age Seventy  
• Is It Time to Give Up Trying, Pt II: Giving Up the ‘Addiction for a Cure’ 
• Enui and Spring
• Getting Older: A Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Patient Faces Difficult Choices
• The Methylation  Mambo