Is severe tiredness 'chronic fatigue' or something else? : Story by Dr Martin Scurr

readers letter
"
My daughter, now 40, had a traumatic birth six years ago — soon after she started feeling unnaturally tired. A private consultant diagnosed fibromyalgia, and she has ME. She has tried everything — acupuncture, counselling, reiki — but the fatigue is crippling.

Name and address supplied."

reply

Is severe tiredness 'chronic fatigue' or something else? (msn.com)

 

The article reads like an ad for Magnesium + Advanced?

 

That's because it is (see the link to the original Daily Mail article)

 

Tender points are not used anymore in FM diagnosing. The author is not up on the latest.

 

And being old is a ten times commoner cause of widespread pain, I can assure him. There is now only one position I can lie in at night for more than ten minutes.

 

Sometimes I wonder whether ME is just senescence praecox.

 

It's unfortunate that the daughter's traumatic birth isn't described. Did she have a prolonged birth which resulted in permanent damage to bladder/bowel? A stillbirth? Did she have a catastrophic bleed? Was she given a caesarean and have her bowel punctured and develop sepsis, and/or lose her bowel? Did she have prolonged post-natal depression?

I'm sure that there are many more possibilities that obstetricians could come up with. There simply isn't enough information to allow readers to have an informed opinion or make up their own minds about what happened and what might be happening now.

 

But Jonathan, that near miss, when the family conference decided not to go with counselling, may have resulted in you suffering [near miss] PTSD -- hence your pain is psychological --- and my fee is ----

 

They are here