She is only 33 years old and suffers from chronic fatigue. Every movement is exhausting. Even on good days, your energy is just enough to go for a coffee with a friend. Nevertheless, Karin Münster has goals for the future and wants to do more than just survive.
It is a simple movement. Raise your arm, stretch it out, grab it and pull it back. But her arms feel like heavy concrete blocks are hanging on them. Her hands are shaking, she can't reach for the butter. The task at which she fails seems so banal, so everyday: Karin Münster * just wanted to make a loaf of bread. Your illness does not allow that.
Every little job becomes a marathon on bad days, an indomitable feat. Add to that the pain in the whole body. The 33-year-old has been living with this condition for about a year and a half - she has ME / CFS. It stands for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).
Behind this complicated name is a complex organic, chronic illness that makes normal life almost impossible for those affected.
What is ME / CFS exactly?
The ME / CFS disease is characterized above all by the postexertional malaise. This means that all symptoms of an affected person appear after little physical and mental exertion. However, ME / CFS is primarily known for chronic fatigue - often translated as chronic fatigue syndrome in German.
However, this makes the disease trivialized, because people like Münster are not simply exhausted like any healthy person after exercise. A one-off effort is often so exhausting that sick people have to stay in bed for days, some even for weeks, to recover from it. In extreme cases, ME / CFS sufferers can no longer walk, speak or eat on their own.
Researchers from Aalborg University in Denmark compared several chronic diseases
in a study and assigned ME / CFS to diseases with the lowest quality of life. The pain and physical limitation that ME / CFS sufferers endure on a daily basis are therefore often worse than, for example, in multiple sclerosis patients or cancer patients.
According to Sebastian Musch, a chairman of the German Society for ME / CFS, people with a mild course of the disease already lose 50 percent of their previous level of performance. Your daily energy resources are mostly used up after getting up, brushing your teeth and having breakfast.
In addition, ME / CFS patients suffer from numerous other symptoms, which are composed and expressed individually from case to case. Rapid heartbeat, dizziness, swollen lymph nodes, increased susceptibility to infection, joint and muscle pain, headache, twitching, sleep and concentration disorders, hypersensitivity - these are just a few examples, because the list is long.
