Cfs, Chronic fatigue syndrome, M.e., Treatment

Introduction

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Welcome my dear friends to my very first blog post dedicated to fatigue, and in particular chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and numerous others conditions that all result in often incapacitating feelings of lack of energy. What makes this a little different is that I’m a fully qualified doctor. And I am a sufferer. One that has experienced and still do fatigue and pain for close to 10 years. I am on your side and know howyou or your loved ones feel. I know the stigma, the suspicious looks from your physicians, the endless barrage of doctors in hoping that one will finally be capable of making a diagnosis or cure.

In this blog, I’ll take you through my own experiences behind the lines with these conditions which are often derided by my medical colleagues. I will discuss my own experiences in dealing with these conditions and having met experts in the field.

Finally, I will discuss where we are in terms of getting closer to determining diagnostic algorithms and potential treatment modalities for these disorders. There are no panaceas here but an open space to discuss everything that is fatigue related.

Lastly, being a blog, I want everything to be free from €£$. It disgusts me the lengths to which certain physicians prey on vulnerable people who have nowhere to turn to in order to make money by pilfering pills or techniques that have little or no credibility under rigorous scientific scrutiny. I will touch on a lot of this in due course but suffice to say I wish to debunk a lot of the junk that is written on the Internet. For obvious reasons, I prefer to remain anonymous given I still practice medicine at a large teaching affiliated university hospital. Hope to hear from you and all comments are warmly welcomed including any areas you’d like me to cover. Feel free to follow this blog and you will be notified when there are updates.

Best of luck to you all, keep your faith and never lose hope. Dr RT

9 thoughts on “Introduction”

  1. As an layperson ME patient of longstanding I’m very interested in the views of clinicians with ME/CFS, who are in a position to understand the professional culture that affects how patients with ME are regarded. I’ll be reading this with great interest.

    I understand your wish for anonymity. I wonder if you feel able to say which country you’re in? Things are very different in the UK, say, from the US.

    Thanks for starting this blog – looking forward to reading future posts.

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    1. Thank you Sasha for your kind comments.

      My next blog will cover exactly the point with which you raised, namely the culture and attitudes of physicians towards patients with ME. I could talk about it all day but I will save it for my second blog which will have a number of anecdotes I think many will relate to.

      I don’t believe there are many if any blogs of this nature eg from a physicians perspective & one who still suffers, so I’m hoping it can be informative for patients at all levels of understanding of the disease, from not sure what CFS stands for to cutting edge diagnosis and treatment. My aim is to minimise the medical & scientific language in order to ensure most people understand the message. I’m well aware however that most are fairly well up to speed on developments, particularly at the wonderful Phoenix Rising. But sometimes one needs a non judgmental and clear voice to sort through the noise and erroneous and unreliable information often disseminated through the web and the statistically unreliable studies proposing the latest “breakthrough”.

      Hopefully this blog can raise a following and be a source of information, encouragement and hope. I am always keen to hear back from sufferers like yourself because to many, we suffer an invisible illness known and understood only truly by ourselves.

      Regards

      Dr RT

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  2. Welcome to the blogosphere, Dr RT,

    I am curious why you chose to combine fatigue with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome given that confounding the two has been the CDC’s strategy from the start in trying to bury the true neuro-immune/mitochondrial disease and given that this is exactly the reason that we have so much unscientific research on the books now that hurts patients tremendously every day.

    Also, will you be covering myalgic encephalomyelitis?

    Looking forward to your thoughts and insights.

    Thanks,
    Jeannette

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    1. Hi Jeannette, many thanks for the comment. I’ll touch on the exact point you make in a longer blog. The CDC definition serves only one purpose in my opinion, a means to segregate those that are at the severe end of the disease spectrum. This serves to aid in control vs affected cohorts for research purposes. The pathway of disease in my honest opinion is the same once other causes have been ruled out. I appreciate this is a contentious point which many will disagree with as those severely affected/housebound don’t see themselves as merely suffering from fatigue/chronic fatigue but of the entire “syndrome”.

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  5. Hi Dr RT,
    Im an RN, I haven’t worked in almost 20 years because of the illness,
    Welcome to the blogosphere 🙂

    There is a doctor who has this illness, a vascular surgeon who hasn’t worked in 20 years, he did an article about Post Exertional Debility.
    First doctor with the illness who I have seen write an article related to the illness.

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  6. Hi. I’d be interested in reading the doctor’s article re post-exertional debility. Thanks for sharing.

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