Howdo all,

righto – I have been ill a lot this year and i need advice and yep have tried to MTFU. Have convinced myself I must have lymes etc re sheer number of ticks I have encountered earlier this year… Had normal bloods done = fine and now awaiting lyme results…

Docs reckon i have CFS poss due to a nasty undiagnosed virus i had earlier in the year – made worse by a background of stress which I have only recently admitted. All I know is i havent been physically ( despite wanting to ) able to ride a bike since the end of May when we rode the brecon beacons – I rode like a sack of crap which is def not me…

I feel totally wiped out and exhausted all the time, and i am having to take 1 – 2 hr naps every day after work or at the weekends…. Docs made me take a month off all exercise and I still am not right – had sore throat / headaches all last week too… work is not being that sympathetic = more stress…

Its doing my head in and its making me depressed / stressed and its spilling over into work / personal life too… My diet etc and sleep is generally good. So any suggestions – I am wondering if girlfriend is right in saying its stress related…

plus my jeans are getting tighter re not riding ! I have gone from being able to ride for all day epics in the lakes / peak etc to hardly coping with walking my springer spaniels !!!

Paul

There is an article on stw somewhere about Lyme and diagnosis. diagnosis is sometimes hard to do from the usual tests. Have a search for it.

As for chronic fatigue – its basically a diagnosis of elimination. There is a lot of info out there about it but even medical researchers cannot agree what it is or even if it truely exists.

Stress is a large element usually in these things. Take a month of work at least IMO.

Firstly my sympathies.
I have had experience of a long term viral thing that fully knocked me over. Background was that I had done a big year of racing and came back from a non-stop exp race to a mess at work. A few days in i fuond myself lying on my hall floor at 2am doubled over. Could barely walk the next day and just felt awful. Docs did test after test and the only thing they could see evidence of was massively high EBV which indicated glandular fever. I think i had already had it before.
Anyway upshot was i was wasted, could barely function for 3 weeks, i had to keep working as i am self employed and every day i would be in bed sleeping at 6pm. Went from racing hard to barely getting out the house. The worse i felt the more low and down I got.
One day I got up and still felt bad but decided there and then that I would do whatever I could to recover. Went to see a herbalist who put me on some natural stuff and suggested I replaced my training and sport with yoga and stuff which I did. I made a pact with myself to get better and stronger. Long story short – 7 months later i rode my bike for 15 minutes which was incredible. another 7 months after that we came 4th in another expedition race. Nothing in my life had changed – still manically busy at work, relationships etc but I just made a very concerted effort to manage myself. With all viral things its super hard as physically and outwardly you look OK but you really don't feel that way. Honestly, hunt around for a decent herbal place and adjust your mind to thuinking better – sounds corny but it worked for me. I also did some NLP work on changing my attitude to sport which was a massive help. 2 years down the line now I am 100% better.

I hate to admit i am stressed but more i think about it = prob is a major factor

A few of my co workers are on the sick with stress too and we all hate our jobs…

vicious circle = biking / weekends away = stress relievers but not riding re physical symptoms = making it worse…

paul

Oh and for me taking time off work made me moer stressed, what I did was just organised myself better and prioritised what i needed to do. My boys took up the slack for a few months to help me out because we are mates as well as business buddies.

nzcol

many thanks – can i email you re some questions?

paul

Yes – had something very much like that (described as being "kind of post viral fatigue syndrome") though it came from parasitic infection rather than viral. It lays you out something chronic, my girlfriend -at-the-times Dad had ME and thought it was something similar to that.

Erm… advice wise – can't really help there. I was at Uni at the time, and between this and malaria (the source of it all) I was off for most of a year. It dogged me for a fair while after that too, but that is because the NHS weren't overly interested in chasing down and sorting the malaria. I would suggest you find the underlying cause and get that sorted, then hopefully the fatigue will start to take care of itself.

Sorry… can't be more helpful, other than understanding what you are going through!

Glandular fever was a negative test – been tested in the past too..

Sounds like NZcol has much more productive advise! I shall bear that in mind for next time myself!

yeah no worries best one is my username at securify dot
co dot nz

hmmm

done a lot of backpacking and being bitten by stuff in Australia and NZ and Japan… who knows what it is – read that sandflies can vector stuff like lymes etc – have become an internet bore re ticks now…

dont think i have exposed myself to malaria…

I am so frustrated by it all i find myself getting in a strop at stupid things – litter / bad driving / friends not returning calls n texts etc !!

paul

If stress is an element go off work sick. Your health is more important than any job

My experience was that my GP just gave up. Completely stumped and suggested in a medical way that I HTFU. They totally misread my blood tests and it wasn't until I went to see a sports doc who is a racing contact that she really started to explain what I had done to myself and said she had never seen an IBV that high – ever. Stress was a major contributing factor – it triggered a sort of IBS reaction whcih was why i was doubled up. Still get it very occasionally – slippery elm bark fixes it though and a spot of bike based meditation 😉

That was the first time i had been to a doc in about 12 years as well.