Define "better"?

In the sense of "all better", back to where I was in 1987 before I got the virus, I'll probably never get to that point.  For one thing, because even healthy people my age can't do as much as they used to do 22 years ago.

 

But for a CFS patient coming out of relapse and heading for remission, it really is true "you're not getting older, you're getting better".

In 2001, a trip to the local farmers market sent me to bed for a full week.  I came home and couldn't even get the veggies as far as the fridge to put them away.  They rotted on the living room floor, where I'd first collapsed on the way in.

 

By 2006, I could generally go to the supermarket and put the cold stuff away before I collapsed, but then I'd be down the rest of the day.

 

Today, I still only got as far as putting the cold stuff away before I collapsed, but it only cost me 2 hours nap to feel like I could do something else today.  It's not going to be anything physical (like putting the canned goods away), but I am recharged enough to read some stuff for work.

 

If you'd asked me in December 2000, when my business partner counted 17 of 31 days that I said I couldn't do any work because of blinding headaches, I would have told you that going back to work full-time was impossible.  Never going to happen. 

 

The right combination of prescriptions, addressing what's really wrong (rather than treating "what the doctor knows how to fix", which isn't what I have), has gotten me to the point where "someday" returning to full-time work sounds realistic.  That point is still years away -- Dr. Murphree (www.DrRodger.com) told us that you need at least one year of recuperation for every year of deterioration -- and it's probably not going to be the active work I did as a paralegal, scurrying around downtown, lugging boxes of files and stacks of research books, up and down between my desk and the file cabinets 100 times a day.  But I do think I may be able to do full-time editing at home.

 

You have to look at the small steps and see how far you've come, rather than looking only at how far is left to go.  I may be normal retirement age by the time I get to that point, but I had never planned to retire at 65, anyway.  My father worked to age 80, and I'm sure I can do the same if doctors continue giving me the pills I know work, rather than things that have been proven useless.

 

 

 

 

 

---

A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps!