Forebearance
Senior Member
- Messages
- 568
- Location
- Great Plains, US
I would like to write a post in memory of a beloved aunt of mine.
She died recently. She had undiagnosed, untreated ME/CFS for the last 30 years of her life.
Everyone in my family noticed that she started feeling lousy in her mid 40s. But she had a couple obvious health things going on. She was overweight and needed a hip replacement.
When she finally had the hip replacement surgery, she didn't seem to be doing better in terms of energy and general health. Several years after that she developed a slow growing kind of cancer. So then all her health issues were blamed on that.
She had to have three surgeries to remove tumors. After each surgery they slowly grew back. But six months after the third surgery, she started to feel really bad.
Her doctors at the University of Michigan Medical Center thought that something else was wrong besides her cancer. They put her through six months of medical tests for everything under the sun.
I thought it really looked like she had the symptoms of severe ME/CFS. But I didn't want to intrude.
Finally after six months, when her doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, I decided to call her up and give her my opinion.
She told me she had just figured it out herself -- from watching an episode of the Dr. Oz show where he talked about SEID. It was such a relief to me to know that she had figured it out. She said she thought she'd had it since her mid-40s.
So of course I told her about good ME/CFS specialists near her, and suggested some pretty safe supplements she could try right away.
But before she could get started on treating her ME/CFS, her cancer came back and made it all moot. She died of cancer, according to her doctors.
Rats. I hate that she suffered for so long with a mild to moderate case of ME/CFS and I didn't know about it.
I hate it that there is apparently not a SINGLE doctor in the whole University of Michigan Medical Center that knows enough about ME/CFS to diagnose it.
Thank you for listening.
Forebearance
She died recently. She had undiagnosed, untreated ME/CFS for the last 30 years of her life.
Everyone in my family noticed that she started feeling lousy in her mid 40s. But she had a couple obvious health things going on. She was overweight and needed a hip replacement.
When she finally had the hip replacement surgery, she didn't seem to be doing better in terms of energy and general health. Several years after that she developed a slow growing kind of cancer. So then all her health issues were blamed on that.
She had to have three surgeries to remove tumors. After each surgery they slowly grew back. But six months after the third surgery, she started to feel really bad.
Her doctors at the University of Michigan Medical Center thought that something else was wrong besides her cancer. They put her through six months of medical tests for everything under the sun.
I thought it really looked like she had the symptoms of severe ME/CFS. But I didn't want to intrude.
Finally after six months, when her doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, I decided to call her up and give her my opinion.
She told me she had just figured it out herself -- from watching an episode of the Dr. Oz show where he talked about SEID. It was such a relief to me to know that she had figured it out. She said she thought she'd had it since her mid-40s.
So of course I told her about good ME/CFS specialists near her, and suggested some pretty safe supplements she could try right away.
But before she could get started on treating her ME/CFS, her cancer came back and made it all moot. She died of cancer, according to her doctors.
Rats. I hate that she suffered for so long with a mild to moderate case of ME/CFS and I didn't know about it.
I hate it that there is apparently not a SINGLE doctor in the whole University of Michigan Medical Center that knows enough about ME/CFS to diagnose it.
Thank you for listening.
Forebearance