ME

ME

Sunday, October 24, 2010

a complication of ailments


If only I could make sense of it or, better still, describe it in more tangible terms, that would perhaps make an accurate diagnosis more likely. It would even help if it was understood what kind of investigation / observation may be an aid to acquiring such a diagnosis.

Today is a classic case of the hard to define condition, a day when I've felt distinctly queasy and ill at ease, painfully so for a considerable portion of that time. A nagging chest pain, at times acutely sharp at others more like a dull deep bruise, sits atop occasional abdominal spasms. My head at times feels giddily hollow, a leadenly floating  balloon rather than a helium filled one. Sundry long standing gastroenterological ailments may well be behind many of my other symptoms but there, the frustration is an inability to find their cause.

As someone who suffers with the crippling muscle fatigue, muscle spasms, cognitive disturbance, and even tenderness of glands, associated with the neurological condition ME, it is all too easy to ascribe each new (or even apparently randomly recurrent) ailment to this underlying condition. Come to think of it, different individuals will experience distictive variants of the dis-ease; even a "sudden onset" condition finds its home in a body which already has its own history, pre-existing ailments and vulnerabilities. Perhaps, indeed probably, a body with a predominantly neurological illness can easily fall prey to other non-neurological complications.

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