We’ve all encountered some ignorant idiots in our time. Here are some situations I’ve encountered:
- I told my primary doctor that I had been seeing for a year that I was going to apply for disability. His response? “Why?”
- School teachers that tell you that they’re offended when you rest your head on the desk during class, how disrespectful.
- Parents that think you’re just being difficult and don’t want to get up and go to school.
- Randoms on the street that say “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Oh, I have that too! I’m so tired after working my 8 hour shift!”
- Fatigue, so like what, you just get tired sometimes? Get some sleep and you’ll be fine.
We want them to understand how we’re feeling, but how? After years of dealing with this, I’ve learned a few things. You need to compare the feeling to something they are familiar with. When I first got the CFS diagnosis, I looked at some books and what I found was very depressing quote. I’ve since used it to my advantage to get others to understand me, however.
“CFS patients feel effectively the same every day as an AIDS patient feels two months before death; the only difference is that the symptoms can go on for never-ending decades.” —Prof. Mark Loveless, Head of the AIDS and ME/CFS Clinic at Oregon Health Sciences University (Congressional Briefing 1995)
By comparing the feeling of living with CFS to that late-stage AIDS, someone undergoing chemotherapy, it helps garner some understanding. People as a whole have a lot of sympathy for those dying of cancer and AIDS – many have had a friend of family member stricken with these ailments.
You can find more descriptive quotes here that really paint the picture of what life with CFS is like: https://thoughtsaboutme.com/quotes/
Shaking Off the Chains 