Don’t dismiss post-viral ailments like chronic fatigue syndrome
The average person thinks of a virus as an illness that makes you sick, then you recover, or even die on rare occasions. I certainly thought this way in 1994, when I was warned that a bad flu season was on its way and that my risk of exposure was higher as I worked with young children. My employer advised me to get a flu shot. At age 43, I thought I was too young to be concerned.
I was fine and living an active, somewhat stressful life. One day that April, I started to experience a stomach virus and had to leave work early. While driving home, my body entered a surreal state, like none I’d ever experienced before or since. I pulled into a convenience-store parking lot and spent the next half an hour trying to get up enough energy to walk a few feet to a pay phone and call 911. I was examined at the hospital and told “it’s just a virus,” so I went home.
After more than 25 years, I have never fully recovered. I was diagnosed in 1996 with a post-viral condition resulting in chronic fatigue syndrome, now known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (or ME/CFS).
Why didn’t I recover? It’s not fully known why some people recover completely from a virus and others don’t. Research indicates that there can be a genetic pre-disposition involved. The point is that post-viral illness is a real thing.
It can last for months, years or even a lifetime. I have tried many treatments, both traditional and alternative, hoping to recover.
When you think of COVID-19, is death the worst-case outcome? That depends on your view of life. It’s a philosophical and religious question. But, it’s important to be aware that a virus is not simply a matter of life or death.
Post-viral life can contain neurological, cognitive and digestive problems. It can increase allergies and cause extreme sensitivities. It can leave you with muscle pains and head pains that no aspirin will relieve. It can contain a level of weakness that you have never known before. You may go through transitional periods where you can imagine what dying feels like because your body seems to be hovering between fading away and being alive. You revive, only to experience this later again.
How do I know this? I have lived through all of it. In a post-viral existence, your mind may be clear one day, but you are in pain. The next day your pain may subside, but your “brain fog” leaves you unable to function. Another day, your mind is clear, your muscles feel OK, but you’re too weak to reach the magazine on the coffee table and too weak to sit up to read it anyway.
Every post-viral illness is different.
What they have in common is that an unrecovered post-viral life is not the life you had before.
The cavalier attitude of some government officials, not wanting to coddle their citizens and wanting a quick return to a robust economy, does not factor in the truth about viruses. There is a percentage of post-viral patients who will become disabled in the full medical sense and will not be able to contribute to the economy or society in the future and this is a real consideration.
The take away message is
They can be puny or they can possess power beyond what you can even imagine. Contact your congressional representative and request that they consider co-sponsoring the newly introduced HR 7057, “The Understanding of COVID-19 Subsets and ME/CFS Act.”