I had a full on, diagnosed, 6 month bout of Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome about 4 years ago.
An interesting diagnosis – it is based on a set of symptoms, rather than a cause. It is a diagnosis by elimination. It is a diagnosis the doctor’s give you because they have absolutely no idea what to tell you.
They do a host of tests, for all sorts of unfathomable diseases (I do not have AIDS. Or gluten intolerance. Or thalassmia). And they come up with nothing. And then they do the tests again.
Still nothing.
And then, there is the look of despair.
It comes in waves, I am told. Lots of people get it at the same time.
Perhaps you just need to sleep more? Stop doing as much?
How did it happen?
For about 4 years I had recurrent tonsillitis. This was probably caused by two onsets of anaemia – probably due to vegetarianism, working three jobs, training at the gym pretty hard and finishing off an engineering degree.
Anyway the recurrent tonsillitis scarred my tonsils so much that any infection or a hard week at work would make me susceptible to all types of tonsillitis – viral, bacteria, phantom. I became a queen of the self medicator – I had a stack of Maxamox prescriptions at home and the chemist practically knew me by name.
And then I had one particularly nasty bout. I worked through it, ignored it for awhile, and never really got better.
How did it effect you?
I had a really sore throat all the time. It felt like razor blades were going up and down my throat. But mostly I was just exhausted.
I was lucky however, I could still work full time. I just had to stop everything else.
What is it exactly?
No one really knows. My nautropath said it was caused by eating milk products. That was about the best medical advice I got during my whole episode.
(Oh and by the way, eliminating milk products did not help.)
So how did you get through it?
I tried many, many things, and spoke to many, many people.
In the end, it came down to a fairly simple management strategy. Which I developed by trial and error.
From what I understand, this is quite common.
My list was as follows:
- Swimming in cold water: I love this one. This still really calms me down and resets me for the day.
- Watch the diet: No caffeine, alcohol or sugar – which was easy enough to find out. But strangely, one of the most important things was eating on time. I needed to make sure lunch and dinner happened when they were meant to.
- Sleep well: This was harder than I would have thought as PVS brought with it some pretty serious anxiety issues. Which would manifest right as I was trying to get to sleep . I learnt a lot about self-managed sleep hygiene at this time. (Just type sleep hygiene into google).
- Daily slow walking is required, BUT minimise overall travel. Do not go out. Do not pass go. Do not collect $100. No social life. The internet was a lifesaver.
- No stress: Again, obvious enough.
And I continued doing these and got better bit by bit, each day. And then I stopped taking the pill and two weeks later I was a new person. It was like I had never gotten sick.
The best advice I got…
Stop being so hard on yourself.
There is a lot of self-doubt that is associated with something which cannot be diagnosed or quickly cured.
Perhaps I worked too hard. Perhaps I exercised too much. Perhaps I ate too poorly.
But they don’t know what it caused it, so how can you?
No amount of thinking, obsessing or analysing can ever, EVER change this.
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Tags: better-living, cold-water, illness, post-viral
