CFS/ME vs Mitochondrial Dysfunction

This paper is a totally different take on mitochondria's role in CFS/ME than the standard idea brought forth by Dr. Myhill (mito ATP is broken and needs repair).  Of note, Dr Myhill is a general practitioner who treats patients in a regular clinical setting and is not a researcher per say.  This paper was done by genetics researchers using patient data from a central database.  Okay with that caveat let's proceed...

If.  IF! I am reading this paper correctly, then the authors looked at three things in the mitochondria (mito) of PWME/CFS and age/sex matched controls: the haplogroups, SNPs and heteroplasmy.  Think of haplogroups as the ancestral lines of the mito DNA.  If you come from the UK you will have slightly different mito DNA than someone that comes from Asia.  These lines can be traced back for thousands of years over hundreds of generations.  As an aside, the lineage of humans was traced back through maternal mito DNA.

SNPs are single nucleotide polymorphisms which are single locations on a gene.  Each location can have one of two proteins that encodes the genetic information for accurate cell reproduction or genetic recipe if you will.  A single SNP error can potentially lead to illness or disease but not always as the body often has work arounds and redundant systems in place to ensure survival despite coding errors.  A single disease often has clusters of SNP associated with it rather than a single SNP.

Heteroplasmy is the case where a single cell has mitochondria with different types of DNA.  Sometimes this diversity is good and can lead to long life and other times it can lead to disease.  I know too little about this in general to add to this.  Right now this is just paraphrased from the wiki entry on heteroplasmy.

So, this study looked at the ancestry of the mito DNA, the single genetic errors in the mito DNA and the number of different types of mito DNA in patients.  And some very interesting data popped out:

• when all the variables are adjusted for there are no specific SNPs associated with CFS/ME
• there were no significant differences in the heteroplasmy of CFS/ME patients and healthy controls
• This is the interesting bit: while there were no significant differences between CFS/ME patients and healthy controls with regard to haplotype, each haplotype is predictive of the subclass of CFS/ME patients.  In other words, while a single or combination of haplotypes could not predict illness necessarily happening it could predict the symptoms once illness is present.  So one haplotype would have more neuro symptoms, while another would have more gastric symptoms while a third would have more energy production problems.  Wicked cool!!

The significance of these results is that...

 "The variation in symptom constellation that occurs in ME/CFS could be due to genetic variation in individuals, rather than differences in underlying cause of the disease."

which is VERY important to understand.  While there seems to be no difference in mitochondrial DNA between the sick folk and controls, the mito DNA haplotypes do affect how the illness presents itself.

Of course this research needs to be duplicated to be confirmed but it is super cool none the less.

Here is the link to the very technical paper:

Mitochondrial DNA variants correlate with symptoms in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome  Paul Billing-Ross^1†, Arnaud Germain^2†, Kaixiong Ye³, Alon Keinan³, Zhenglong Gu¹ andMaureen R. Hanson^2*

AMPK Triggers Mitochondrial Repair

This very interesting paper just came out of the Salk Institute.  It is a tad technical but it might be key to CFS/ME treatments in the future.

Mitochondria are the little power plants for ALL of our cells.  Every single cell in our body has mito in it.  It is fairly well accepted that mitochondria don't work properly in PWME but the mechanism by which it is broken isn't well understood..  See Dr. Myhill's page for more info on mitochondria and CFS/ME.

The paper that just came out from Salk shows the mechanism responsible for the dismemberment of damaged mito and its regrowth.

"Earlier research has shown that AMPK helps to recycle damaged mitochondrial pieces, and signals to the cell when to make new mitochondria." (1)

"When mitochondria are subjected to damage in the form of environmental stress, toxins, or genetic mutations, [which in turn causes AMPK to trigger] the cell [to] take the mitochondria apart, remove the damaged pieces, and re-assemble the mitochondria." (1)

"AMPK, which can be seen as a cellular fuel indicator, is activated by the diabetes drug metformin. Exercise and a restricted diet are also known to activate the enzyme, indicating that these therapies work, at least in part, by promoting mitochondrial health." (1)

This makes me wonder about the effects of prolonged fasting on PWME.  It looks like fasting not only would knock out B cells but also induce the production of fresh mitochondria.  Both of which could potentially be very good for PWME.   Now if I could only muster up the willpower to do a three day fast.  My blood sugar goes really wonky when I don't eat properly.

Oooh almost forgot the links to the papers:

1. Mitochondrial Repair Mechanisms Seen in Study, Offering Insights into Diseases by Magdalena Kegel
2. AMP-activated Protein Kinase Mediates Mitochondrial Fission in Response to Energy Stress by Erin Quan Toyama et al 

One thing I do want to look into are the SNPs that control MFF which might be part of my Genetic Genie report.  Not sure.   Will have to get back to you on that one if I remember.  

Immune System Reboot

There is a new treatment for MS that was developed in the UK where patients go for the standard chemo rounds to knock out the immune system and then are implanted with stem cells to regenerate it.  The new cells aren't damaged so the body stops attacking itself and the myelin sheath around the nerves regenerates giving the patients their health and functionality back.

Cancer Treatment for MS Patients Gives "Remarkable" Results by Fergus Walsh BBC News 

There has been some speculation in the CFS/ME world wondering if this would work for us as well.  Trouble is we don't know if this is an autoimmune illness or just an illness that hijacks the immune system; i.e. is the body under attack from the immune system or is it just overactive and then underactive?  This is a critical difference.  There is some evidence that it is indeed an autoimmune condition in at least some patients as seen in the Rituximab trials.  Rituximab, another cancer drug, knocks out the b cells and works in some but not all CFS/ME patients.  If there is any lingering viruses in our bodies then once the immune system is knocked out the virus reactivates and a raging infection occurs so there are significant risks to CFS/ME patients particularly those that had a viral onset.

B Lymphocyte Depletion in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  An Open Phase II Study with Rituximab Maintenance Treatment by Oysten Fluge et al 

Antibody Wipeout Found to Relieve Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by New Scientist 

The million dollar question is 'Is CFS/ME an autoimmune condition?'.

Talking of rebooting the immune system, turns out it can also be done without the drugs.  Prolonged fasting causes the body to 'eat' the white cells (b cells) which forces the body to replace them with new ones essentially rebooting the immune system.  I don't know if anyone in the CFS/ME community has done cyclic prolonged fasting.  Myself I get loopy very very quickly if I don't eat regularly.  Also I don't know if this works on women as well as men since they tend to react to fasting differently than men.  Anyway, here is the article on prolonged fasting and the immune system...

Fasting Triggers Stem Cell Regeneration of Damaged, Old Immune System by Suzanne Wu University of Southern California

I am SO tempted to try a multiday fast but I'm very scared of ending up bedbound.  If you want to give it a go drink LOTS of fluid.  LOTS.  Otherwise you get dehydrated and end up in hospital with other problems.

The Detoxification of Women's Bodies

Detoxing is all the rage.  However, its definition is a tad fuzzy and there are tons of  unscrupulous folk willing to scam you out of your money over it.  My first clue regarding the definition was when I told my CFS doc that I was having detox problems with my glutathione IVs.  He asked me what exactly I meant by that and I had to go into a lengthy explanation of what was happening to my body.  This should have cued me into the ramifications of detoxification language but I was messed up enough at the time to only get slightly aggravated with my doc for being so dense.  Lately, however, I've noticed something that I find disturbing.  I don't know if this is new since I'm relatively new in the chronic illness sphere.  It might have been around for years or decades.  Also, this is fairly difficult for me to describe since the evidence for my disquietude is subtle.  So let me start with language.

Language is a powerful thing and the way we use language can give us insight into how the mind is functioning both in a neurophysical sense and a psychological sense.  An example of a neurophysical glitch would be word loss/substitution.  Calling your pets your furbabies might be an indication that you are substituting your pets for actual children on a psychological level.  What is disturbing me is the way women tend to discuss detoxification.  

Our bodies do indeed have many real detoxification pathways that can break.  The methylation (MTHFR) pathway broke in me and I got very sick as a result.  I needed glutathione IVs, activated charcoal, bentonite clay and B12 to get thing working again. There are also liver pathways (CY9 SNPs), the lymphatic system and probably a few others I don't know anything about yet.  Our bodies can also break in another way; for example leaky gut, where toxins that normally wouldn't be allowed in, sneak in through gaps between the cells lining the gut.  So there are ways that we can break that allow stuff in (leaky gut or leaky brain barrier or even broken skin) and ways that we can break where we can't adequately eliminate toxins from our system (MTHFR, CY9 defects or even not being able to poop regularly).  These are biochemical and physical glitches in our system.  They can be tested for and for the most part fixed or worked around given the right supplements and/or meds and/or diet.
We can also reduce the toxic burden on our bodies by eating clean, removing toxins from our environment, using air and water filters, etc.  The idea is that the fewer toxins we are exposed to then the less the body has to work to eliminate because the toxins were never ingested/absorbed in the first place.

Now here is where it starts to get weird.  When I first started the B12 and folate protocol for MTHFR I started bleeding heavily for weeks on end.  It took me a while to figure out that it coincided with the vitamins.  When I asked about it I was told by several women "Oh that is just the body detoxing.  Don't worry about it.".  I accepted this explanation and tried to continue with the protocol.  This lead to anemia from the excessive blood loss.  I even ended up in the ER at one point with a UT probe up my hoohoo (very uncomfortable BTW) with no evidence that there was anything causing the bleeding.  Taking high doses of fish oil leads to the same thing for me.  I was put on high doses of progesterone to halt the bleeding and there was even talk about cauterization of my uterus to prevent it from happening again.  Not a route I wanted to go so I stopped taking fish oil, B12 and folate which stopped the bleeding.  But this idea that my uterus was detoxing started niggling at me.

Other women were experiencing the same side effects as me but I have yet to find a scientific explanation for it.  The male docs I talked to had never heard of it and the women assumed that their bodies were toxic/dirty and trying to self correct through a detox process that doesn't exist.  While you do indeed detox via breath, sweat, pee and poop, I've never EVER heard of detoxing through the uterus.  I certainly didn't bleed heavily while I was on glutathione IVs even though the detoxification was so drastic that I had to take charcoal or clay after a treatment to reduce the herxing.  

Now you have to realize that women have been told for centuries that bleeding is dirty.  Our lady parts are dirty.  They must be cleaned, deodorized and sanitized.  Companies make a fortune convincing us to use tampons, pads, deodorants, soaps, shampoos and, more recently, shaving all our hair off.  So the idea that our uterus must be detoxed isn't a stretch.  In fact I just found this article:

Doctors Warn Against Using Herbal Tampons To "Detox the Womb"

which describes little herbal sachets that go into your vagina to cleanse it.

I've noticed in some of the patient pages that women often go for the detoxing first.  They assume that their bodies are contaminated and dirty and need cleaning.  This is even before they get tested for ANYTHING, genetics, vitamin deficiency, glutathione levels, ANYTHING.  I never seen the guys do this.  True these spaces are mostly populated by female patients so my sampling is severely skewed, BUT given the history of "dirty women's bodies that must be cleansed" it isn't much of a stretch that women are now assuming that they must be detoxed with little to no evidence.  You see it in the huge sales of juice fasts, sugar detox diets, Whole30 resets, etc.   It is just assumed that our bodies are contaminated and must be fixed.

I'm still trying to work through these ideas.  There is some line that needs to be drawn between actual physical problems when the body breaks and this idea that we are necessarily dirty and must be cleansed at all costs.  If our bodies work properly, then they detox themselves just fine.  There are rumors about yoga gurus that can drink poison without any ill effects because they have trained their body to detox itself very efficiently, but I digress...  I guess I'm trying to get away from the idea that women are necessarily dirty, that our natural state is unclean or that because we are sick we must be toxic.  I keep seeing in the patient forums the language women use to describe detoxing in relation to their bodies and it often reminds me of the "women are dirty and must be cleansed" line of thought.  While we might break, we are most often fixable but we are not necessarily dirty.  It is very hard to find examples of the language I'm referring to since it is very subtle.  For me, it has been a cumulative thing rather than one big glaring example.   Never the less it still worries me.  We need to hold ourselves in higher esteem.  Get tested first.  Don't assume that you are dirty/contaminated.  Find out what is broken and fix that rather than going on random and possibly dangerous detoxification protocols that might not have any science behind them at all.  Our bodies are miraculous objects that can handle toxins when working properly.  And, no, you do NOT detox through uterine bleeding.  That is just plain nonsense akin to bloodletting with leeches.  If you are bleeding, stop the protocol before you get anemia.

However, I still have no idea why B12, folate and fish oil cause heavy bleeding.   In that regard, the medical mystery continues.   In the meantime, I do want to be more mindful about how I discuss and think about detoxification.  Language matters and my uterus does NOT need detoxifying, thank you very much.

Gait and CFS/ME

One of the hallmarks of this illness is the fact that we can NOT multitask.  One of Dr. Bell's tests was asking his patients random questions while clicking a pen.  That pen clicking was just enough to distract the patient and make them unable to answer questions.  It was one of his low tech tests for CFS/ME as no other patients would be affected by pen clicking as severely as PWME.  So from his unscientific country doctor test we go to the scientific study that show this to be true:

Reduced gait automaticity in female patients with chronic fatigue syndrome: Case-control study

 Jan b Eyskens, MSc PT, DO, Pr Ph;1* Jo Nijs, PhD;2 Kristien Wouters;3–4 Greta Moorkens, MD, PhD1,4

That paper basically says that when you distract a PWME while they are walking they stop walking as they can't walk and pay attention to something else at the same time.  Personally I've known this since my illness started.  On my severe days where I have trouble walking at all, the least little thing distracts me and I freeze in place until I can refocus on walking again.  It is like the pen clicking test.  The least little distraction causes me to stop walking and stand like a statue.  My brain can't handle processing that much information at the same time.  Walking is one of the more difficult tasks we do as humans which means that it takes a lot of brain power to perform the act of walking.  PWME just don't have the processing capability to walk, talk and chew gum at the same time.

To the ER and Back Again

Part of the reason I've been missing from here is the last health scare escapade.  For about a year now I've been having some nasty nasty chest pain (and yes I should have gone to the hospital the first time it happened and yes the EMTs and nurses all chewed me out for not doing so).  Anywho, when I'm fast asleep I'll get woken up by a horrible stabbing pain in my back on the left side just above the bottom of  my rib cage.  After the initial shooting pain it tends to settle into a tight band around my chest at the level my bra strap usually circumnavigates my chest.  Not a way that I like getting woken up.  I can't lie down.  I have to sit up until it passes which usually happens after a few minutes of excruciating pain.  Each time it has happened I've wondered if I'm having a heart attack but then it goes away and I almost immediately go back to feeling normal (well my normal) so I've put off doing anything about it.  One October morning about 10am I got woken out of a dead sleep by this stabbing pain.  It was the worst it has ever been.  This time the pain migrated up the right side of my neck/throat into the right side of my face before settling into the more normal tight band around my chest.  I was scared enough to fess up that I should prob go to the hospital.  Well this set of an astonishing chain of events.

First hubs got grouchy that he had to, yet again, take me to the ER.  He asked me where I wanted to go.  I told him that we should prob go to the hospital ER but the walk in clinic two towns over would be open also.  So rather than going to the hospital which was much much closer he decides to head to the walk in clinic.  The waiting room was full to busting but I got to cut to the head of the line because "heart attack".  After I had a team of women working on me doing vitals, EKGs etc one of the PAs told me that she knew me.  Turns out she was the PA to my regular doc many years prior so we chatted a bit and she told me off for not going straight to the hospital.  She told me that they were arranging transport for me since it might be a 'heart attack'.  Righteo.  'Can I go to the bathroom before you stuff me in an ambulance?"  "Sure."  I go and do my business but when I hobble out of the bathroom not one but three ambulances, a fire truck, the police and a rescue unit were waiting for me.  Turns out the staff decided that transport would take too long and they called 911 instead.  I had most of the Wilmington rescue services there as well as three private ambulances.  I got loaded onto the gurney nearest me and off I went to the hospital.  You should have seen the bill sent to Medicare.  Thousands of dollars.

The EMTs were great but I did get chewed out for not going straight to the hospital.  He asked me why and I told him to talk to my husband.  Then his cell phone went off and he had the Star Trek communicator ringtone which got us talking about scifi movies and made me very happy.

I spent the next several hours in the ER hooked up to various machines.  Lots of blood was taken.  They finally told me that I was going to be admitted for observation and more tests.  The hospitalist, who is supposed to be my patient advocate,showed up and I took an instant dislike to him.  I never saw him again even though I was there for three days.  Hubs went home around 10-11pm while I was still waiting for an open room.  I got formally admitted around midnight.  This seems to be the norm for this hospital.  I get held in the ER and if I am admitted it is usually after midnight.  Must be some magical insurance thing.

Anyway, I never see my husband for the rest of my stay.  I get a terse phone call the next day where he tells me he is sick and shouldn't show up.  I beg my son to come and bring me a huge latte from Starbucks.  So there I am by myself in the hospital room, hopped up on pain meds and now suffering from sleep deprivation.  Since I'm in the cardiac wing they do vitals every couple of hours rather than letting you sleep any length of time.  In comes the Mr Cardiac Doc.  He asks me a few innocuous questions then suddenly turns to me and forcefully announces "You are obese!  You are going to die!"  He said more after that but I have no recollection of anything else he said.  All that rattled around in my brain was "You're fat and you're going to die!!"  I think my mouth was hanging open but the day is pretty fuzzy.  I had wanted to talk to him about my CFS/ME and the stress test he wanted to do.  He started telling me about the treadmill and I interrupted him to tell him about the CFS/ME and how I couldn't walk on a treadmill and he launched into another rant "I've been doing this 27 years...." at which point I knew it was useless to try to talk to him.  He saw me as a fat blob that he had to fix.  A 5'2" 290lbs woman with chest pain.  Of course I was going to die of heart failure.  It didn't matter that I have excellent blood pressure.  It didn't matter that my cholesterol numbers, while not perfect, are still within normal range. It didn't matter that I have no family history of heart problems.  It didn't matter that I used to exercise every single day and was in great shape despite being fat (fit fat it's called and yes it is a thing).  It didn't matter that I had gained most of my weight due to meds and steroids.  It didn't matter that I can NOT exercise due to my illness.  I HAD to walk on his stupid treadmill even though the stress test can be induced chemically.  He was going to prove me wrong!  Of course I knew I wouldn't make it very long on the treadmill so I'm like "Game on, asshole!".

So the next day comes and I'm scared.  I haven't slept well in two days now.  I've been on oxygen continuously "just in case".  They keep alarming my bed but I've figured out how to turn it off and the nurses are too busy to notice.  Dr Ahole has ordered a low fat no salt diet for me which when combined with the gluten free corn free diet leads to NO food choices so I'm now starving and caffeine deprived on top of everything.  I get rousted out of bed and sent down to the cardiac lab.  I have an ultrasound done of my heart which comes out pretty good and then I get sent over to the treadmill room.  They put a harness on me.  No one explains what is going on.  They make me sign papers that I can't read.  I'm freezing cold and they park me in a cold plastic seat with the johnny hanging open due to the harness.  Loud rock music is blaring over my head.  This isn't going to go well.  I get left there for 20-30mins.  I can feel myself descending into head bobbing territory.  Finally the crew shows up: the nurse, Dr A'hole and the nuclear med nurse.  Dr A'hole proceeds to tell me how great I'm going to do on the treadmill.  I mumble "uh huh" and go over to it and climb on.  They start it and already it is going to fast.  My normal gait is much slower.  Then they incline it.  I almost burst out laughing.  "Oh this is going to be good!" runs through my head.  I'm holding onto the handle bar for dear life and am already breathing heavily.  I time the breath to the steps.  Then the ataxia starts.  First my feet start dragging.  Then I start staring at my hands gripped onto the handlebars.  My head starts bobbing in rhythm to my feet.  All three of them panic.  Dr Ahole is yelling "Shut it off!  Shut it off! She is going to pass out!"  The nurse is scrambling to shut down the equipment and the treadmill.  The nuclear med nurse who is a burly guy is trying to catch me and inject me at the same time.  The doc tries to put a chair behind me on the treadmill but the nurse waves him off because she doesn't want the treadmill damaged (fuck the patient).  They manage to get the radioactive dye into me and me onto the gurney and now I can't speak.  The nurse is asking what happened and I manage "Ataxia.  Ataxia starts when I exercise too much."  She was confused as she had never heard of it but Dr A'hole knew what it was.  They covered me in blankets and of course part 2 of ataxia is a panic attack.  I still had no idea what was going on.  I didn't know what they shot me up with.  I didn't know what was supposed to happen next.  They covered me in blankets and left me alone in the room again.  I could hear Dr. A'hole on the phone transcribing his notes on my disastrous treadmill episode.  I had lasted 1 min and 9sec.  They had to stop the test early so the data might not be useful.  "Fuck you Doc!  I showed you! Asshole!" I wanted to scream at him.  I did end up getting stuffed into an imaging machine while having a panic attack.  I was a mess.  Nothing like being completely at the mercy of an abusive doctor.  It was a horrendous experience.  Having no family there made it worse.  God knows where hubs was.  I never saw the cardiac doc again.  Whew!

When I saw the floor doc, he told me that he had reviewed my chart and tests and thought I was probably having gastritis (inflammation of the lining of the gut) from taking Celebrex for four years straight.  He doubted that I had anything wrong with my heart but I still had to do the second part of the stress test.  However, no one could tell me what that second part entailed.  He asked me how I was doing and how I was feeling and if I was tired.  I told him yes.  I was exhausted and I couldn't eat anything they were giving me.  A few hours later a nurse popped in to tell me that I could leave that afternoon if I promised to show up the following day for the rest of the stress test.  I agreed and went home with my son.

This wasn't the end of the ordeal however.  Oh no.  Things couldn't be that easy.  Hubs was running a 103F fever.  He couldn't drive me anywhere so my son had to take another day off work to drive me in for stress test part two.  With my brain now working, I asked the second nuclear med nurse to explain what was going on.  Turns out the treadmill is done first, then you get shot up with dye and put in a special CT scanner that is just for imaging the heart.  Then you go back on the second day when you are all relaxed, you get shot up with dye again and imaged again so the two can be compared to each other.  The long waits I had the day before were for the dye to permeate my system so that they could do the imaging.  Geesh if they had just taken the time to tell me what was going on the day before.  We are done in under two hours.

Hubs is still sick.  My son and I are ignoring him at this point as he is just sleeping in weird places all over the house.  He built himself a pillow fort in one room and slept on the floor there.  I asked him if he needed to go to the ER since he was whingeing so badly.  He said no but he ended up at his docs the next day.  Turns out he had a bad case of flu that had turned into pneumonia.   So here I am fresh out of the hospital and supposed to take care of him.  Not going to happen.  He never asks how I am or what happened.  If he talks at all he just complains about how awful he feels.  I am livid.

I go to my doc for a follow up.  He tells me that I have pulmonary hypertension and wants me to do a follow up with the cardiologist.  I told him I flatly refuse to see the guy from the hospital.  He asks what happened and I almost break down in tears so to avoid crying I don't tell him how nasty he was.  Just that I want a different doctor.  My doc explains the hypertension as a pressure difference between the heart and the tube feeding blood to the lung.  Okay.  So far so good.  Until I get home and Google it.  Holy mother of God I'm going to die!  Turns out this is horrible.  It can't be fixed and it is rare enough and deadly enough that there are specialty centers set up around the US to deal with this and everyone recommends going straight to them and not dicking around with a regular cardio doc.  Luckily I'm near Boston and there is a center at Brigham and Women's where I've already been a patient so I'm in their system.  I set up an appointment with them but it will be a month before they can get me in.  I see the regular cardio doc in the meantime and he tells me that I don't have pulmonary hypertension and it was a freak data point in the echocardiogram.  Whew!  I still want  the expert's opinion though just to put me completely at ease.  The specialist confirms no hypertension.  YAY!!

However, both docs insist that I start an exercise program.  I try to explain CFS/ME to them and all we do is argue.  I give in.  They are cardio docs.  Their mantra is diet and exercise.  I've got the diet part down but I can not exercise and they just can't wrap their head around that.  They both guessed that I have sleep apnea so now I have a apt at Faulkner Hospital in Boston for a sleep study but it isn't for another two months.  Sigh.  Hurry up and wait.

In the meantime, I'm completely wasted from the hospital ordeal, the cardiologists, the trip to Boston, being scared that I was going to die.  I was actually planning out arrangements.  I have the worst two months of my illness all year and winter hasn't even begun yet.  Normally October is my best month of the year.  Gah!  Thank goodness my mum came for Thanksgiving.  I slept so much while she was here.  I started to feel more like my old self.  Kid had gone on vaca to Mexico and hubs had rushed out to Chicago to help his brother who has cancer and took a turn for the worse.  It was just me and Mum and it was great.  No sched to keep.  Relaxed meals.  I could go back to bed whenever I wanted.  It was great and I was bummed that it had to come to an end.

BTW, in case you were wondering.  Hubs and I are talking to each other again.  It took a while though.  I was really really angry.

Fuck CFS!

Accolades

While I've been busy being sick rather than writing, someone found my blog and decided that it was worthy of an award!  Just when I thought no one was reading this.  I guess I have to attempt writing again.  I have lots of material saved up but it is mostly links to other pages.  I have to flesh out the writing so that it makes sense to folk other than myself.

Anyway, thanks for reading!!  Hopefully I won't be too sick to write.

Here is the linkback to the award site.  The page looks pretty darned good with lots of info.

http://www.chronicpaindisorders.com/the-10-best-fibromyalgia-blogs-for-2016/