Symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

One day, you wake up and realize, “Hey, this isn’t right.” By definition, CFS symptoms must last a long time to qualify as chronic, but the onset of the illness can strike as suddenly as a bump on the head or over the course of a 24-hour flu; doctors call this fast-paced progression of symptoms sudden onset CFS. Or the symptoms can creep up on you slowly like gray hair and wrinkles; the term doctors use for this case is gradual onset CFS. Before I go into more detail about evaluating CFS symptoms later in the chapter, here’s what you need to know about the differences between sudden and gradual onset CFS:

• Sudden onset CFS: People who are suddenly overtaken with a tiredness so heavy that it feels like a weight dropped out of the sky can often pinpoint the exact day on which CFS entered their lives and the exact circumstances that triggered their symptoms. These people are more likely to have experienced the flu-like symptoms associated with CFS, including a sore throat, chills, swollen lymph nodes, or fever, followed by the sustained, long-term fatigue that’s so characteristic of CFS. Because of these “infectious” characteristics, sudden onset CFS appears to be the result of problems caused by a virus or bacterial infection — two commonly suspected causes of CFS.
• Gradual onset CFS: If your CFS occurred over time, with the fatigue and other symptoms associated with it (such as flu-like symptoms, aches and pains, and terrible headaches) progressively worsening over weeks or months, you’ve experienced a gradual onset. A study done in Chicago found that 63 percent of the study’s participants developed CFS gradually. A different study, this time done in Wichita, Kansas, found that 77 percent of the study’s participants developed CFS gradually over time. Because gradual onset CFS is so insidious, creeping up on you while you’ve been going about your life, it can be more difficult to recognize.

As with any condition, the sooner you discover you have CFS, the better able you are to take care of it — and the better able you are to adapt to a new lifestyle. True, you can’t cure CFS, but you may be able to stop it from becoming so debilitating that you become unable to keep up with your daily activities.