Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Everyone knows what it feels like to be 'tired', when you have that awful feeling after that very late night, or your suffering from jetlag. All you want to do is close your eyes and go asleep.
Well, try multiplying that feeling you had, triple it and that's roughly how people feel who suffer from 'Chronic Fatigue Syndrome', (CFS).
Sleep deprevation can cause an immense amount of problems. Even though your sleep maybe thick and doped, you still wake up unrefreshed and tired. Normal everyday household chores can become out of reach as all you want to do is go back to bed.
For someone accustomed to being healthy, feeling the loss of control, grieving over lost functions and opportunities can leave them feeling quite depressed.
There has always been a lot of stigma about CFS and ME, with some Doctors questioning it as an illness, but I quite assure you if you have suffered from any form of sleep deprivation then you will know it is 'definitely' a real illness, and not just something in your head.
There are also a number of medical conditions that are hard enough to deal with on their own let alone having CFS to cope with as well. Apart from ME, other known conditions that also include CFS are Fibromyalgia, Myofascial Pain Syndrome and Lupus.
Unfortunately there is no known 'cure' for CFS, it has to be managed and usually with some form of drugs and other treatments. There is however a lot of support out there now, which was not available some years ago. There are a number of organisations and support groups and forums which are a great network of people to talk to if you are suffering from CFS, in fact too many to list.
Over the last few months of my 'acute' problems with my 'chronic' pains I have been suffering with CFS severely and whereas before I would have an afternoon rest to help my pains, now I just want to sleep all day long. I'm clock watching from lunch time to see if it's too soon to go to bed and sometimes miss the whole afternoon sleeping. Before I would wake up after my afternoon nap feeling refreshed and ready to go, now I just wake up and don't want to get up at all. It is a truly debilitating condition to have to deal with.