How do Drs. distingush CFS from Fibro Fatigue?
 

I haven't been on here for sometime due to health problems and I'm trying to stay on here to keep my mind off of losing Bill, my husband on the 21st of Nov.

I wanted to ask how can Drs. decide if you have CFS or fatigue that goes with Fibro. I have been diagnosed with both but this is just something that interested me.

I didn't know for the longest time that there was a CPS syndrome. When I was diagnosed with RSD and TOS they also diagnosed me with CFS and CPS. I thought that the RSD and TOS meant that I was in Cronic Pain,duh. I will chalk that up to Fibrofog instead of stupidity. LOL

Thanks for any help.
Ada

From what I understand of CFS, blood work will tell if the CFS is active. Please correct me if I am wrong. With FM, there is no real test to tell one way or the other if your fatigue is from FM.
Sorry I feel very ignorant about CFS to know for sure.

Ada,

I'm sorry to hear about your husbands passing. You have my condolences.

(((((Ada)))))))


Honestly - most doctors have no idea how to tell the difference.

Wendy - the only bloodwork that I know of for CFS is to see if the patient has active mono. If a patient has chronic fatigue without active mono and without sleep apnea or other direct causes, then usually the diagnosis of CFS is made.

There are a few blood tests that are not for CFS but can help diagnose CFS -- for example, patients with CFS often have a low ESR, but patients with fibromyalgia can often have a high ESR, so if a patient has CFS and FMS their ESR can be normal which utterly confuses the doctors!

A few doctors have tried to make conclusions between some virus and CFS and doing a blood test for that virus (I forget the name of the virus) but (as far as I know) they have not made a positive conclusion yet.



Here are some websites about FMS and CFS together and how to try to tell the difference -

http://www.arthritis.org/resources/n..._fibro_cfs.asp

http://www.fmnetnews.com/pages/criteria.html

For me, I put my foot down and told the doctor that I didn't care what the cause of my fatigue is, I just wanted to stop being tired all the time!! The doctor then started me on Provigil, and I feel soooo much better.

I hope that helps Ada,
Liz

CFS - Fibromyalgia - PTSD - contrasting various symptoms
 

Dear Ada ... Let me add my condolences on the loss of your husband.

I have CFS. I was under tremendous emotional stress at the time I came down with it and that leads, of course, to lowered immunity. So considering the onset (which others generally have) does reinforce the infectious theory.

I started out with what seemed like a bad very painful achy flu. The acute illness and all the aches and pains faded --- but I developed the most incredible degree of fatigue.

How bad? To get the mail, I walked out the front door, past my neighbor's apartment, down two steps and there were the mailboxes. By the time I got back, I had to spend hours recovering from the exertion. Some days, I was feeling so well that I would go out my back door, step out the patio gate to my car at the curb, drive 4 blocks to the grocery store, park next to the door, walk in, straight to the bread racks - first thing you encountered. Pick up a loaf, turn and go thru the speedy check, back to the car at the curb and home. By the time I got home, I could barely get inside and would need at least an entire day of total bed rest to recover. It could be a week or more before I would again experience one of those "gee, I feel so good - I MUST be better days" and then the trip for a loaf of bread and boom.

I had continual low-grade fever for 6-7 months straight. I NEVER had a normal temp, no matter when I took it. After that, the fevers would be recurrent, but over the next year, would occur at slightly longer and longer intervals. As the years passed, I would have relapses whenever I experienced a severe emotional blow of rejection.

Outside of the ludricrous degree of fatigue and the near relentless fevers, the most telling symptom was the brain memory drain. Now this is NOT the brain fog of PTSD. This is different. I WAS able to read and did spend that entire first six months reading book after book. But by the end of the year, I would sometimes discover myself near the end of a book when I would suddenly reach a page where SOMETHING would trigger a glimmer (a very tiny vague glimmer) of a sense that I had already READ this book a couple/few months earlier. A bit more thought, and I would be able to confirm that I had --- but I would still not be able to remember how it ended.

Prior to the CFS, it would never take me reading more than a few sentences on the first page to tell me, "I've read this before"... so this was totally bizarre.

Years later, I had my fouth (at least) and most serious bout of PTSD, and experienced something different - Brain FOG, rather than brain drain. I experienced a great sense of fear of losing my cognitive ability - my ability to absorb or think about deep or profound or technically challenging material. I even had difficulty attending to the task enough to even READ -- the challenge was simply too much, overwhelming, even when it was the most mundane and ordinary content. It took me over a year to start feeling that I had a good deal of my intellectual functioning back -- but the rest was slow to regain.

So with CFS, it was only the beginning acute flu-like onset where I had the achy deep pains...

Hope this helps.
Teri

Thanks Liz and everyone. I am totally ignorant when it comes to CFS and I admit that. I just know that little bits that people here have shared and that is all.
While I do have chronic fatigue I know it is from the FM. Gosh....the illnesses that crossover in symptoms are SO confusing.:Scratch-Head:

Yep, they are... and I think the overlap and the confusion is what is causing the major roadblock for me right now.... my doctors all say I am "interesting" and "fascinating" and then they scratch their heads and have no idea what to do next in terms of diagnosing and treatment for the auotimmune stuff :rolleyes: :Sigh:

Thanks to all of you for your help.

With my CFS, I slept for a better part of a year maybe two. The only thing I did was see my PCP once every two weeks and I would beg him to give me something for it. I even came up with this bright ideal if he gave me some sleeping pills to sleep that I would sleep the full 8 hours to sleep it off. With CFS you don't always sleep the whole time but you wake up feeling just as tired as if you have never slept.

Like you Teri, I had the brain memory drain. My brain would be so drained that I was to tired to even remember what got me tired. I also had to sign a living will because of the shape I was in with the everything going on with me along with the CFS. I also deal with the PTSD, Major depression, and the suicidal tendencies so they all add to the CFS I think.

I had read somewhere that Andy Griffith and Lee Ann Rimes has CFS. They said in that article that you just have to sleep it off until you get through a bout of it.

Anyway thanks for all of the good info.

Ada