Personal Update: Symptoms come and go without explanation

Since September, 2015, I have dealt with severe shortness of breath (SOB) and post-nasal drip (PND), which always waxed and waned in unison.  The two symptoms were clearly tied together somehow.  From September through January, the symptoms gradually grew worse and more frequent, to the point where they became constant companions.  By January, the symptoms were present every day.  The only variable was the severity.

I did everything I could to make sense of the symptoms.  I meticulously charted my activities, food, supplements, and other inputs, trying to isolate a variable as the cause of the SOB/PND.  I visited 4 or 5 doctors.  In the end, I found nothing.  It was frustrating.

Then in late February, they simply went away.  They're not completely gone form my life--I still get them occasionally.  But now instead of every day, I get them maybe once every 5 or 6 days.  And when I do get them, they seem less severe.

Once again, ME/CFS has proven maddeningly difficult to explain.  I have only two theories:  (1) The symptoms were yet another example of inflammatory cytokines attacking one area of the body for a while before moving on to another.  This seems to happened constantly in my experience with ME/CFS.  Or, (2) I picked up a viral respiratory infection in September 2015 that my weakened immune system took 7 months to clear.  I think the first explanation is more likely because the second doesn't explain the periodicity (waxing and waning) of the symptoms.

Now it seems the inflammation may be moving back to my nervous system.  I'm beginning to have "neuro symptoms" again--lack of coordination in the extremities along with brain fog.
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I had the flu last week.  It had been going around my family for two weeks and it finally hit me.  I went to the doctor within 13 hours of the first symptoms and obtained a prescription of Tamiflu.  Then I took to the ME/CFS message boards to learn if there was any reason I shouldn't try Tamiflu.  There were some hints of possibilities of complications with ME/CFS and Tamiflu, but nothing concrete enough to dissuade me.

In the end, I think the Tamiflu helped.  Other, more healthy people, were incapacitated for a week or more with this flu.   I was done with the flu symptoms by day 3 or 4, although the flu did somehow evolve into or pave the way for a bacterial respiratory infection (like it did for 3 of my family members too.)  It was a strange bug.

So again I ended up taking antibiotics (Amoxicillin).  It seems just about the longest period I have been able to do without a serious bacterial infection requiring antibiotics, since 2011, is about 1 year.  I cannot seem to break that one year barrier.  I would very much like to avoid antibiotics but, when you need them, you need them.

My changing prognosis

This summer will be my fifth year anniversary with ME/CFS. Up until recently, I have maintained the attitude that there was a slight chance I might recover on my own. I had read stories about people who recovered, especially within the first three or four years. There was even a small place in the back of my mind that hoped my case of ME/CFS was really just an extended case of post viral syndrome. I could see from statistics I found online, and from interacting with other patients, that this hope was thin. But it was easy to maintain that hope as I was gradually improving, albeit at a glacial pace.

As I have written recently, my health with ME/CFS seems to have peaked in March, 2015. Since then, I have been sliding backwards. I think and hope that I may have found the bottom of this backsliding, but that is still an open question.

Sometime in the last 6 to 8 months, my attitude evolved. I stopped hoping that my illness might all be temporary. I don't mean this to sound glum. There is, of course, always some hope. But now my view is that the peak I experienced in March, 2015, may represent my realistic ceiling. I will of course keep looking for answers, trying various treatments, and reading about the latest research. I still have a tremendous amount of hope that research will lead to more effective treatments. I feel it's healthy to occasionally reassess where I am on my journey with ME/CFS and adjust expectations accordingly.