The brainfog is the most distressing for me, & also the most persistent; I only get a handful of days out of a YEAR where I feel mentally clear (and I am very envious of normal people; they have NO IDEA how lucky they are). My brain does that 'shut-down' thing too, which is obviously embarassing in social situations, and eats up time like a voracious monster. It's like constantly having to restart an engine (and then the engine won't let me get past second gear, and the trannie is slipping...). Especially in a world where the ability to multitask is a badge of honor, & often a necessity in the workplace, brainfog stinks to high Heaven. As another poster said: it's my holy grail. My next most frequent symptom is the Wired/Tired (and it was part of me long before I started w/ caffeine). Can a person get 'dependent' on their own adrenaline? I have tried many things to control it: thoughts (can't I just DECIDE not to be anxious?), meditation (can't stay awake), stretching and aerobic exercise (rode my bike to & from work, Mon/Wed/Fri, 5 miles each direction, from spring to fall: NOTHING improved except my aerobic stamina, & everything else -ESPECIALLY the brainfog- got worse. I'd heard that being in shape aerobically was a good treatment for brainfog, and I was determined to rid myself of the BF. My disappointment was exponential. I was distinctly overwhelmed with zombie-brain [desire to sit & stare off into space] and INTENSE sleepiness after each ride). I often get adrenaline gushing when in bed at night, and oddly, I find I go to sleep faster if I don't try to fight it, just let the heart race, etc. Weird.
Next most frequent is the molasses: misery, esp. when I've got much work to do. It often goes along with the times where I feel too tired to even sit up, and at it's worst (maybe 5-10 days a month) I lie down, feeling too tired to BREATHE. Not asthma, just a sense of being almost paralyzed. I am dreading a day when I have a family emergency during one of those episodes; it truly terrifies me.
And, that FLU feeling: gads! I have two forms of it: one where it is combined with the pseudo-paralysis feeling (ALL I can do is lay there and suffer like a sick animal in the wild. I shove my face into my pillow as hard as I can, cuz my sinuses are throbbing, w/ no fever); and the other form, where I lie there and writhe in pain, having almost a compulsion to move and twitch. If I have the energy to keep writhing and stretching EVERY which way for 2-3 hours solid, the pains go away and I'm completely exhausted.
Before I heard about these diseases, I thought I was crazy. I must wonder how many people commit suicide due to 'CFS'/ME/FMS/etc; I'm afraid that if I had not found out that I wasn't the only one like this, I might have off'd myself long ago. These symptoms, in combination with having to keep the suffering all to yourself b'cuz no one believes you (and the humiliation dished out by doctors): recipe for disaster. My heart breaks for people who are not aware that this is not their fault, nor their imagination. I'm scared there's a lot of those poor souls in the world.
