Not sure what to say to that. I have answered all their questions honestly and am classified in their study as moderate. I am able to drive to the blood draw. I have zero potential to work at all.
Oh dear.
So it wasn't, in fact, as clear as it seemed. Sigh... what a roller coaster I've been on with this paper. I guess the bottom line is that we all, including decent researchers, would like to have objective measures that could be used to judge severity.
I am frequently annoyed by how severity or functionality are judged. At one point I was dragging myself out of bed twice a day for an hour to tutor at home. I was miserable the whole time and crawled back into bed to sleep afterwards. I tutored instead of showering or cooking a meal because I was desperate for the small amount of money it brought in. My specialist's nurse rated me as "mild-able to work" because of that.
It's all about the checkboxes on the questionnaires.
Questionnaires asking things like how often you get out of the house can be very misleading, too. When you have to go out to buy groceries or you don't eat, you go out no matter how much pain you're in, how nauseated you are, how dizzy you feel, or how utterly exhausted you are. You can feel like death warmed over the whole time and know you'll be in bed feeling even worse for the rest of the week, but if you're going to eat, you have no choice. Until you get to the point where you pass out any time you stand up, you go out because you have to or starve. So you get rated moderate. Meanwhile, someone who may be very sick, but not a sick as you, but has a spouse or parent or other helper is able to do what you
should be doing -- stay in bed. They get rated severe. I've been on both sides of that one, so I know. Severity rates are much, much too subjective. Too much depends on personality traits and personal social circumstances unrelated to the level of illness.