Hi folks. I haven’t posted here before but I just wanted to share my story in the hopes it will encourage someone else.

My symptoms got really bad after a lingering bout of “flu” last November- though in retrospect they’d started earlier in the Autumn. I could barely sit up and didn’t have the strength to even write an email. I could only get dressed slowly and struggled to eat. The doctor said I had a mild bowel infection- I was shocked at the ‘mild’ part- and gave me antibiotics, which seemed to help a bit but after a couple of weeks many of the symptoms remained. When I went back, the doctor tested my blood again and said the infection was gone and I was fine. I certainly didn’t feel fine. She told me any symptoms now were just an unlucky virus riding the bandwagon while I was weak and they’d clear up in a week or so.

Weeks passed and I was still drained and experiencing fits of shivers, tingling like pins and needles in my arms, tight breathing and a weird sensation in my chest. I was afraid that something had been missed and I was really ill. I went to another doctor, who had a full set of blood tests done- these all came back fine. He told me it was probably a virus and to come back in a couple of months if it didn’t clear up. I became massively anxious- really over the top alarm. I was afraid it was my heart.

I’m lucky enough that I work from home and my fatigue slowly improved enough that I could sit at the computer to work in the day and then collapse in the evening. I started doing yoga at home from a DVD, adding one pose a week. I improved my intake of 5-a-day dramatically and started taking vitamins as a back up. My Mum suggested I take a short walk outside every day, though each time I went out I had shortness of breath, bloating and gurgling from my stomach. I developed symptoms like indigestion or trapped wind every day. This went on for another 2 months. I started to assume it was somehow all in my head, that I had health anxiety or something.

Then, almost suddenly, I started to feel more positive. The anxiety faded away- no more sitting at home in terror alone every day afraid I was going to die. It just stopped. I needed to sleep in the day less often. I decided to try dropping wheat and caffeine from my diet. The indigestion started to clear up. Maybe it’s just the timing, because my coeliac test result was negative, but since then I’ve made steady gains. Unless I do something very strenuous, I feel almost normal. I can walk to the supermarket to pick up a few things; I’ve even had a couple of afternoons walking around gently in the sunshine. I am so far from the person who was afraid to take a shower a few months back.

The doctor confirms it’s post-viral fatigue. In all, since I first saw a doctor it’s been 4 and a half months, probably 6 since the first symptoms started. I’m by no means 100% yet but I’m finally starting to feel I’m going to get my life back. I just wanted to reassure anyone reading this forum like I did and thinking they might have PVF or CFS that it doesn’t always take years to recover and that even if you feel like I did, you will get better. <img src="images/smilies/smile.gif" border=0 />