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all of the time. Normal tasks became giant undertakings. Back to the doctor for more tests. This is when she told me not only did I have Lupus (SLE) and Fibromyalgia, but I also had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS. Again I asked what is that? Just one more in a long line of things that this disease would do to my body. More steroids, but this time, my body said no! I couldn't tolerate them. I was sick for an entire weekend. The porcelain god became my best friend that weekend. I called and was taken off the steroids. Now what? Back to the doctor. She wanted to try something a little unorthodox. Why not? I said. Anything to get some of the normalcy back into my life. She ran more blood tests. My B-12 level was almost non-existent. B-12 I was told, helped with energy. So a injection of B-12 once a week and then she added an injection of Depo Medrol. This was a different steroid than what I had been taking in pill form. No side effects! I felt the relief from the fatigue with the B-12 within a few hours, and some relief from the pain with the steroid injection almost immediately! So that was the course of treatment for years. It seemed to help keep things in check, until the attack. This time it felt like something extremely heavy was sitting on my chest. I called the doctor. She ordered more tests, and a chest X-ray. I was told it was pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lungs. Now it was time to bring out the heavy ammunition. It's a drug used to fight malaria called Plaquenil. No one really knows how or why it works for Lupus patients, but it does. The doctor had been trying to avoid this as it can have some pretty nasty side effects including doing damage to the retina. Now, this meant twice a year vision screenings. The Plaquenil helped and the pleurisy subsided.

I was lucky during the worst of those times that I had a great friend, an understanding boss and a staff who cared about me. They were understanding when I needed to go home early or couldn't get there at all. I was able to work from home a lot of the time when I needed to. That made all of the difference. You see, I don't look sick. I look perfectly fine. It's all on the inside and it's hard for many people to understand an illness like that. My husband never came to terms with it. I don't think he could handle the fact that I was "broken". That I wasn't able to function the way I always had. He never fully understood the disease and wouldn't discuss it. He was in denial. This was

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