Can my kids / Wife get CFS from ME?

[SickOfSickness]

How is that

More like something makes the immune system not work properly, so then you pick up every common infection over the next months. Immune system can't work properly when you're under a lot of stress, have toxins like pesticide exposure, etc.

 

[Elph68]

Wait this is making sense now...my cfs is really from viral infection.

After my encounter I also ended up getting prostatitis from this. It was a staph infection. I was given a course of doxy for long time.....

So pretty much, this girl I was with seem to have every single disease.... All from one episode I got, CMV, EBV, HSV 1, Staph infection, HHV 6, Parovirus.

How is that

Hi RedLineBoy, do you have IBS? Have you ever had a full fecal analysis done??

The immune system is under attack from a low grade infection/inflammation ..... My problems also started with just prostatitis......

 

[Elph68]

John H Wolfe - yes my daughter was breastfed - well all my kids were, the youngest for 3 and 1/2 years. My eldest daughter who may have M.E has hypermobility (can touch her thumb back onto her fore arm and so can my youngest son) My eldest daughter also has broken her arm(s) now 5 times (latest elbow fracture 3 weeks ago) and my youngest son just broke both the bones in his forearm (snapped right in half) but his may be a coincidence. We tried asking at the hospital about all her broken bones, but they are not bothered.

We ALL (not husband) had measles in 2008. Eldest daughter was sickest as she was 15, youngest two were fine. I (who HAD been vaccinated against it in childhood was very very ill and got pneumonia, then pleurisy) the following year both me and my daughter became very ill (hers was new, mine was a severe relapse after a long near normal remission) I ended up having to look after her as she was bedbound - i probably should have been also, but there was no one else to feed her and help her was, toilet etc. She was never adeuqately investigated by the NHS, despite having bleeding from her bum daily, intense stomach pain, recurring tonsillitis so that her throat would swell and she could barely breath and episodes of fainting.

Luckily shes a lot better now, but has remaining niggling symtpoms - immune system not too good and has poor stamina, but she can work (apart from the odd broken bone and bout of tonsillitis which leaves her bedbound for week at a time)

Sorry - wandered off topic as usual - rambling about my own problems.
As far as i know there are very FEW cases of M.E affecting spouses, but plenty of mothers and children, and in my family and others cases multi generations.

All the best,
Justy x

Hi Justy, I was just reading through what you wrote and 3 things jump out .... gut problems, pneumonia and tonsillitis. All of these conditions can be caused from streptococcus infection ..... did any of the throat cultures return anything?? Viridans strep infection/colonization will always return as normal flora ....

Cheers.

 

[justy]

Hi Justy, I was just reading through what you wrote and 3 things jump out .... gut problems, pneumonia and tonsillitis. All of these conditions can be caused from streptococcus infection ..... did any of the throat cultures return anything?? Viridans strep infection/colonization will always return as normal flora ....

Cheers.

Unfortunately no throat or sputum samples were EVER collected through our ordeal of infections. Our GP surgery is totally incompetent, we both saw at least 3 different Doctors in the practice and none of them did this, my daughter even spent a few days in hospital on IV antibiotics and asfar as i am aware they never took a swab for culture.

I then went on to have regular nasal ulcers/sores and styes. My M.E doc thought it was staph and gave me antibiotic cream for up my nose and in my eyes and i no longer have this problem (although it took a couple of years to clear up and i used lots of immune modulating herbs as well)

Next time my daughter has Tonsilitis i will tell her to ask for athroat swab to identify bugs. My lung specialist now insists i have no more antibiotics until i have had a sputum sample looked at.... of course i now havent had a lung infection in ayear (whihc is a good thing) but because i have M.E he now thinks i was making the infections up (thats another whole sad and sorry story)

All the best
Justy

 

[Elph68]

Unfortunately no throat or sputum samples were EVER collected through our ordeal of infections. Our GP surgery is totally incompetent, we both saw at least 3 different Doctors in the practice and none of them did this, my daughter even spent a few days in hospital on IV antibiotics and asfar as i am aware they never took a swab for culture.

I then went on to have regular nasal ulcers/sores and styes. My M.E doc thought it was staph and gave me antibiotic cream for up my nose and in my eyes and i no longer have this problem (although it took a couple of years to clear up and i used lots of immune modulating herbs as well)

Next time my daughter has Tonsilitis i will tell her to ask for athroat swab to identify bugs. My lung specialist now insists i have no more antibiotics until i have had a sputum sample looked at.... of course i now havent had a lung infection in ayear (whihc is a good thing) but because i have M.E he now thinks i was making the infections up (thats another whole sad and sorry story)

All the best
Justy

Oh dear .... at least your doc acknowledged that it was an infection .... unless it is a common infection like Group A, B or C Strep or strep pneumonea or other, they won't find it anyway ..... Because all my swabs were negative or 'normal flora', I was just labelled a fruit loop and advised to see a shrink CFS/fribromyalga here is considered psychological and requires a positive attitude, a good diet and a shrink ..... Yet 300k's north of me, is the University of Melbourne, one of the leading institutions in studying the cause of this disease .... ironic really ....

 

[Antares in NYC]

I'm truly wondering how contagious this is. I have been suffering ME/CFS for 15 years, yet my girlfriend fell ill with the same thing this summer, suddenly, after being together for almost 3 years. I have no idea what made the difference, but suddenly she fell really ill, with the exact symptoms I experienced in that first flu-like bout 15 years ago. She's been diagnosed with CFS, has been bed-ridden for 4 moths now, and not improving.

At the same time i recently found out two other people within my circle of friends in Facebook have been diagnosed with CFS as well. Three people within my circle of friends, all in NYC in the same year. Are we experiencing a cluster in the Big Apple? I'm wondering.

Anyway, the holiday season is coming and we are meeting our families. I'm getting scared, feeling toxic, fearing that we could infect our relatives. It's an awful feeling to feel toxic; the last thing I needed to take away what was left of my self esteem. Anyway, I don't want to make anyone sick while we spend the holidays with family. I could not overcome the guilt.
What precautions, if any, can we take? Should we use different towels? Not share dishes and silverware? Avoid physical contact?

Any advice would be appreciated. I feel awful enough that the love of my life is bedridden, likely because she contracted this evil thing from me. (It's getting dusty in here... I need a moment).

 

[SickOfSickness]

It's debated. I think yes. I think if under good circumstances they might feel bad for only months, and recover on their own. Good circumstances would be: they have good immune systems, they have no serious genetic defects or they analyze how to treat those defects, are not under a lot of stress of any type, they are able to rest and not push themselves, they have better diets, they do not take medications that make it worse.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/can-my-kids-wife-get-cfs-from-me.25432/
And in my post there I linked to a thread. In that thread I linked a half dozen more.

 

[Elph68]

I'm truly wondering how contagious this is. I have been suffering ME/CFS for 15 years, yet my girlfriend fell ill with the same thing this summer, suddenly, after being together for almost 3 years. I have no idea what made the difference, but suddenly she fell really ill, with the exact symptoms I experienced in that first flu-like bout 15 years ago. She's been diagnosed with CFS, has been bed-ridden for 4 moths now, and not improving.

At the same time i recently found out two other people within my circle of friends in Facebook have been diagnosed with CFS as well. Three people within my circle of friends, all in NYC in the same year. Are we experiencing a cluster in the Big Apple? I'm wondering.

Anyway, the holiday season is coming and we are meeting our families. I'm getting scared, feeling toxic, fearing that we could infect our relatives. It's an awful feeling to feel toxic; the last thing I needed to take away what was left of my self esteem. Anyway, I don't want to make anyone sick while we spend the holidays with family. I could not overcome the guilt.
What precautions, if any, can we take? Should we use different towels? Not share dishes and silverware? Avoid physical contact?

Any advice would be appreciated. I feel awful enough that the love of my life is bedridden, likely because she contracted this evil thing from me. (It's getting dusty in here... I need a moment).

Hi Antares,

you may want to look at the last post I put up in the undetectable infection thread .....

 

[Allyson]

It's debated. I think yes. I think if under good circumstances they might feel bad for only months, and recover on their own. Good circumstances would be: they have good immune systems, they have no serious genetic defects or they analyze how to treat those defects, are not under a lot of stress of any type, they are able to rest and not push themselves, they have better diets, they do not take medications that make it worse.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/can-my-kids-wife-get-cfs-from-me.25432/
And in my post there I linked to a thread. In that thread I linked a half dozen more.

and @RedLineBoy you may want to look at this thread on genetic conditions similar to ME which emerge later in life
and run through the symptom list for all your family

http://forum.notcrazy.net/index.php?topic=9571.0

and maybe look into Lyme disease testing too

good luck

Ally

 

[Tristen]

As SOS says, it's debateable. On the one hand, there is a long history of cluster outbreaks pointing to me/cfs as being an infectious disease (some individual cases suggest the same). But on the other hand, most of us are isolated cases not being any part of an infectious cluster or relationship and never giving the disease to anyone regardless of intimate proximity to others.

Many, including some of our best docs and researchers, believe those with an infectious onset, including cluster outbreaks, had caught a bug that was acting only as a trigger, rather than being the cause of their me/cfs. They clear the bug, but then are left with me/cfs. As you already know, any evidence of a single bug being the "cause" of me/cfs, remains undetermined, and is becoming quite doubtful to some on the front lines and in the labs.

In my 20 years with me/cfs, I've had several very intimate relationships with others without ever transmitting anything close to resembling this disease. I think this is true of the vast majority of us. What I see more often with people close to us getting this disease (or another neuroimmune disease such as RA) is only in those genetically related such as parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. But those not genetically related, like my wife, will not contract the disease, regardless of how physically intimate we may have been. Again as far as I'm aware, this is true for the majority of us. I'm far more concerned about my kids getting me/cfs from me due to genetics, than I am to passing some infection to them, that may be the cause of this disease.

My first thought with your story, is to get some serious testing to rule out the many exclusionary diagnosis for me/cfs....and there are several. You, and especially your girlfriend, may just turn up something that's treatable. Meanwhile until you get this diagnosed, I think your concerns are understandable. I wouldn't want to give this disease to my worst enemy. But again, she may have something infectious, whether it sets of me/cfs or not.

As you know, there is no certain answer to your question.......but you may be able get to the best answer by weighing all the feedback from others. Also, as I said, I would go after further diagnostics. Real bummer to have to miss your family gathering for the holiday, I sure hope you find a way to make it happen

 

[Izola]

I think its autoimmune as well.....but all the clusters are a little hard to explain.

I often wonder the same. I uderstand scientifically that it is rare for 2 or more pathogens to converge simultaneously on a person and make her ill. Yet the current thought is that maybe this has dual or more causality. O,K. so epstien bar and another X-facter both descended on Incline Village and surroundings at about the same time. There's a lot ot and teachers and students in that cohort. So the two don't seem too forced an idea.

But don't tell me this very same thing happened in all the clusters. Just mathmatically, that's bizarre. Not untiI I can see, under the light of the electron microscope, a dual or more bunch of pathogens acting together in a conspiracy against my body w/ corroborative evidence can I believe that.

And, as for a whole lot of bodies deciding to become immunocompromized in the very same way without any of the above, that strains concidence. and comprehension.

So, I've guestioned my own logic. Where's Holmes when you need him?

Maybe an old pathogen transcripted the RNA or DNA and shuffled the deck. Maybe something old became something new. Who know what our immune system would do if it recognized the recombined both and tried to go after two when there is was only only one. Schitzoid immune system.

Neutropic? Your old sneaky enteroviruses do that. Shuffling the deck? Skating Occam's razor. Iz

 

[Mesurfer]

CFS is not known to be contagious.

 

[heapsreal]

Maybe contagious at onset but in my experience my onset was partly because of chickenpox which my daughter had at the same time. She recovered and I didnt. 12 yrs on my wife, son and daughter who were there when I was first ill and been around me most of my life since dont have cfs. I do get paranoid if they get sick with the odd virus but they have always bounced back to full activity with no symptoms.

Thats my experience. But seems like experiences go both ways. Worth getting infection and immune tests done and keeping an eye on them. Theres a long list of iillnesses that can have similar symptoms. Might be worth ruling them out.

Good luck.

 

[Daffodil]

my friend had an unprotected encounter with a woman 25 yrs ago. he developed Reiter's Syndrome, or reactive arthritis. clearly, people are walking around vulnerable to a lot of diseases (maybe because they have low gut flora diversity?? which runs in families!) and just need the right trigger.

but how to explain the CFS clusters? interestingly, there have been MS and lupus clusters too, though not as often......so maybe in some specific areas, there are some environmental issues that are causing several people to be vulnerable to the disease.....these environmental factors are impacting their gut flora, which then results in disease with the right trigger

LOL i have gone in circles trying to make sense of this for decades..makes the brain fog worse

 

[Sushi]

It's debated. I think yes. I think if under good circumstances they might feel bad for only months, and recover on their own. Good circumstances would be: they have good immune systems, they have no serious genetic defects or they analyze how to treat those defects, are not under a lot of stress of any type, they are able to rest and not push themselves, they have better diets, they do not take medications that make it worse.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/can-my-kids-wife-get-cfs-from-me.25432/
And in my post there I linked to a thread. In that thread I linked a half dozen more.

Note: threads now merged.