Slow recovery from colds

[Persimmon]

When I catch an ordinary cold, some of the symptoms will clear in an ordinary period but others drag on for an unusually long time (eg a month or more). This didn't happen before ME/CFS. Have others experienced this?

 

[wdb]

Yes, same for me. Thing is though a lot of the ME/CFS symptoms I suffer are very similar to cold symptoms that I suffer so I am never sure where one ends and the other begins. This sort of makes sense as from what I understand most of the symptoms of a cold are due to body's immune response to the infection rather than to the infection itself so it could be the cold is over quite quickly but the immune response lasts for weeks. Perhaps this is more evidence for ME/CFS being an autoimmune diseases ?

 

[anciendaze]

Any viral illness causes a long drawn-out recovery in my case. Bacterial infections provoke a different reaction; the symptoms last only as long as the infection, though this may go on for some time. This points to a very specific defect in immune response -- holding viruses latent. It has long been part of doctors' anecdotal material about "depression" which has had no significant effect on research into etiology.

 

[GracieJ]

Colds are my worst enemy. Once I catch one, it seems I just cannot get well. Symptoms linger for weeks, and it seems I am catching something new all over again every 7-10 days. I get so run down just dealing with that. Supposedly you cannot catch the same virus twice if the body builds up antibodies; have to wonder if I ever really do, and am just recycling the same virus because the body isn't fighting it off properly. It is one of the most miserable parts of the whole picture for me, making it doubly hard to do anything or commit to anything.

For seven years (before I knew for sure I had fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome), I would get sick around the holidays and not get well again until June, then would develop migraines from the stress of working sick constantly. I'd have migraines all summer, get well (sort of) for a few weeks in the fall, do everything possible not to get sick as winter approached... then start the whole cycle all over again. Employers hated it. I was always ill but seldom missed work. As a single mom, there was no stopping.

 

[ukxmrv]

For the first 10 years of ME I never caught a cold, instead it was always the same symptoms of sore throat and glands. Then for the next 10 years it was cold, after cold, after cold. They came and as my sinuses were damaged by infections, usually ended up with a sinus infection.

It makes no sense to me. With a cold there is the thick discharge from the nose. Why would even that stop for 10 years after the onset of acute ME?

Colds have been a little better recently so I may be swinging back to stage one again? Alternatively it may be that I am better at heading off the worse of the colds now with Vit C. At the first sign of a cold I start on the 1gm tablets and keep shovelling them down my throat. Took many attempts to find Vit C that my stomach could tolerate and does work though.

 

[Ocean]

Yes, same experience.