This is a first-person testimonial from Emma describing her experience with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). She was highly active in high school but experienced a gradual decline in health culminating in a severe crash after a short course of hormonal medication a few years later, around the time of her marriage. Despite extensive testing and specialist visits that found no clear biomedical cause, she was diagnosed with CFS and over 5–6 years became increasingly debilitated (sleeping 12–14 hours, extreme fatigue, brain fog, stopped working/studying). She remained hopeful and was influenced by an online recovery story.
Chapters
Before I got unwell, I was in high school and I was very active at school. I was school captain, I played sport, I did well in my studies and was working a part time job. And yeah, I'd say that I got sick slowly over time. So it's hard. I was still going about all the usual things. And then there was definitely a crisis point where just before I got married, this is. Yeah, a couple years later, again, I reacted really badly to some medications and hormonal medication and I only was on it for a couple of weeks and my health just plummeted, like went from functioning to just being, being like I didn't even know if I could walk down the aisle at my wedding. I was just. The fatigue just was so intense and that was really the turning point. And even though I came off that medication, you know, I was only on it for a couple of weeks. It was just. For me, it was the straw that kind of broke the camel's back. And I didn't return to health after that. I think I was just thinking, like, I'll get better, like I'll, you know, this will pass. And it didn't. So then I started the long process of seeing more functional kind of doctors and doing every test under the sun, spending thousands of dollars. And eventually, when nothing was coming back in those tests, I was told I had chronic fatigue syndrome. I went from being pretty functional but with like a lot of fatigue to I could have walk. I would kind of be able to muster up the energy to do small bursts of things in the day. But pretty much over time I gradually kept declining and I would sleep for 12 to 14 hours, get up, lie in bed, have a shower, be absolutely exhausted, go back to bed, make myself a meal. Like I basically was just surviving. I had to stop working, studying, no energy, brain fog. I struggled to get my words out, to put sentences together. Basically over a period of five to six years while I was trying to regain my health, I never lost hope that I could get better. Someone who I followed online that had a recovery story from chronic fatigue shared.
