A Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / M.E. story

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Until the year 2000 I was hard working, active and interested in many things, but never quite satisfied with myself. I used to drive myself to reach more and do more. In spring 2000 I was doing a work experience in South-Korea, Soul, with a textile designer Chunghie Lee ( I was studying to be a fashion and textile designer). I worked there really hard for about 4 months. Then I returned to Finland to my school and my fast and furious energy continued thru the summer. I hardly slept or ate, I was in full speed. And when the school started again in the fall, I had a meltdown. My body couldn't take it any more and I had mono, it was pretty bad, I had high temperature and was bed ridden for a couple of weeks. After that I never had my energy back. My life was changed. 

I tried and tried to be as before, but I was just exhausted and wanted to sleep. I was finally diagnosed with depression and started to go to therapy. There I was diangosed after about a year to be bipolar, that summer 2000 had been my first mania session. After that came the depression. I started to recover from that but still my energies were lost andI  started to have aches and pains. Then I was diagnosed with fibromyalgy and I was sent to a rehabilitation course. It made me worse. 

I tried to live with my energyless life the best I could. Since 2002 I was working as a librarian and loved it. But I didn't manage to work full weeks, so from 2005 I've been working half time only. I'm partly on disability money from government, based on my bipolarity. 

It was year 2010 or something when I first heard of chronic fatigue syndrome, and thought, that's just like me! I asked my doctor about it, and she said that it isn't very well known, so I shouldn't think about it. So I didn't. But later I saw a program about CFS in tv and later in 2014 I booked an appointment with a doctor who was in that tv show. He is the only one here in Finlad who knows something about CFS and he diagnosed me! It was a relief! I wasn't mad or lazy. I had a sickness. He prescribed me LDN and I started taking it. The first weeks were really bad, I had side effects but they went away after a few weeks, just like the doc had told me. And after about 3 months I started noticing some positive effects. I was able to do something more than before and after 6 months I noticed that I recover faster from exhaustion. So now I'm still not able to do much, but I can walk my doggies 3 times a day and can work part time as a librarian. I also trained to be a peer support group leader and we have a group meeting here in my home town once a month. It gives me great pleasure to be able to help others with this rarely known CFS.