As if every Chronic Fatigue sufferer did not crave validation:  The New York Times ran an article today stating a study published last week in the journal Science suggested that might be the case, reporting that many patients who had the syndrome were infected with a recently discovered virus.  The new suspect is a xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV, which probably descended from a group of viruses that cause cancer in mice. How or when XMRV found its way into humans is unknown. But it has also been linked to cancer in people: it was first identified three years ago, in prostate cancer, and later detected in about one-quarter of biopsies from men with that disease (and in only 6 percent of benign biopsies). It is a retrovirus, from the same notorious family that causes AIDS and leukemia in people.  

But the new study is not conclusive, and a great deal of work remains to be done to find out whether the new virus really does play a role. Just detecting it in patients does not prove it is what made them sick; people with the syndrome may have some other underlying problem that makes them susceptible to the virus, which could be just a passenger in their cells.

Even so, thousands of patients have already contacted scientists, asking to be tested, said Dr. Judy Mikovits, the first author of the study and the research director at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, a research center created by the parents of a woman who has the syndrome. Dr. Mikovits said she expected a test to become available “within weeks.”

Dr. Mikovits and researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic reported in Science that 68 of 101 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, or 67 percent, were infected with XMRV, compared with only 3.7 percent of 218 healthy control subjects. Further testing after the paper was written found the virus in nearly 98 percent of about 300 patients with the syndrome, Dr. Mikovits said.

 

Read article in The New York Times, Is a Virus the Cause of Chronic Fatigue?  and/or Science, Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome .

Tags: CFS, Chronic Fatigue, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, New York Times, Science, XMRV

Hey, I wouldn’t mind someone saying that to me every once in a while.  I’ve been sick for a while- a long while. In that time I’ve felt my womanly wiles slip away day by day.  It’s easy to do when you are only able to take a bath once a week.  So when I heard the new trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua, I thought the trailer was fairly cute, (The male lead issues the immortal words in my blog title…)  and it brought a couple of things home to roost.   The first being that I had become the female equivalent of a eunuch. Not something that a woman who has been married a quarter of a century needs to be hit over the head with.

I’ve traded silk slips for long sleeved pajamas and sexy trysts for sleeping pills long ago. I have a wonderful husband who I wouldn’t trade for all the silk slips in China. I think this is the part where I’m suppose to say “It isn’t him, it’s me” but I certainly wouldn’t mind a tongue in my ear occasionally.

Tags: Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Chronic Illness

People always talk about ‘thinking outside the box’, but what about when you are literally living inside one?  For seven months now, I have been lying in bed, staring at three walls, being waited on like the Queen of Sheba. You would think it would be a grand thing. Breakfast in bed daily. The “Life of Riley” as my Grandmother was fond of saying.

Well, the fun is over. 210 days later, the fun is definitely over. The pillow under my rear end to help ward off bedsores is becoming hard. The heating pad for my arm pain is cumbersome. My temper is short. Thank goodness my family is kind and generous with the grapes they have been offering. Too bad they have been bitten so often.

Tags: Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain

This past week a friend of mine came to visit and brought a DVD to help pass the time.  She had picked a comedy and was all ready to while away a few hours.  Of course, it was only a few minutes into the movie until one of the main characters was hugging the toilet from chemotherapy and my friend was appalled that she had brought something like this back into my home. Me? The Bucket List had made me uncomfortable for a few minutes, sure. One, no one likes to be reminded of hospital visits where they, too, were hugging hospital toilets. Two, I couldn’t dream of a hospital visit lasting so long that you could plan a Bucket List and three, I couldn’t imagine beginning to feel well enough to even consider one.  Mostly, I was struck by how movies treated illness and my friend’s reaction.

The Bucket List was the first motion picture I could remember where illness didn’t look “pretty”.  Even in Terms of Endearment where Aurora went running around the Nursing Station (and I still to this day tell my own mom they have to be related), poor Emma got a few dark circles under her eyes before she kicked her own bucket. Why do they insist that being ill isn’t a part of life when statistics show that over 35% of all Americans have some form of a chronic illness? Life isn’t always beautiful contrary to what Roberto Benigni says and neither is illness. When The Bucket List took it on directly, my friend flinched- even in a comedy. I think there is the answer.

ChronicChick

Tags: Chronic Illness, The Bucket List

When your body turns on you, your world becomes a vast, unfriendly place. A dark room filled with monsters underneath the bed and who lurk in the shadows of the closet. I had visions of being Bette Davis in Dark Victory and friends clinging at the bedside. Instead its been months where, after the initial hospitalizations, the visitors dropped off and we were left to cope on our own.

 

 

 

 

 

In preparation for an upcoming hospitalization, the admissions coordinator referred me to

Caringbridge.org. Caringbridge is a free site which offers to those who have chronic illness, cancer, hospitalized, on hospice- even are military deployed- a way of staying in contact with friends and loved ones. I can’t brag on it enough.  Already in two weeks, I have heard from people I have not been in touch with for years, received calls, emails and visits, and my family is getting a much needed break.

While Bette Davis and I may both be “facing that dark night” together, she may be the far greater actress, I have better eyes.

ChronicChick

 

Tags: Bette Davis, Caringbridge, Chronic Illness, Dark Victory

Morning, Peeps!!

This morning on Fox and Friends Sunday, Janice Dean (their Weather Woman Extraordinaire) came forward to talk about her life dealing with Multiple Sclerosis. Timed appropriately with the start of Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week, Janice’s Journey began by showing Janice discussing her two and 1/2 years since her diagnosis and a terrific explanation of the disease by an Emory University MD. Janice’s segments also showed others affected by MS like the terrific Teri Garr (have you read her memoirs, Speedbumps- which was originally titled, Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat?) (I’ll post the vid here from Fox News because was I smart enough to capture the AM edition?? Ohhhh, noooo…. but then again, it is Sunday morning, so cut me a break, peeps.)

Speaking of books, I’m going to invite each of you to take a look at (and then join) Shelfari. Shelfari is a free virtual bookshelf for book lovers. Using Shelfari, you can create a personal shelf of your books, see what your friends are reading, get and give recommendations for what to read next, create book lists, and even share your opinion on a book with friends on the growing Shelfari community. For those of us with chronic illness, we can not only look at those books that directly affect our lives but how about those books that just get us through the day!! Some times I want a cup of coffee (even if that darned MD that I adore has decaffed me) and a romance novel (ok, no darts at this point) and I can make it. Reading a great deal of medical books and journals…… yawn……. comes with the territory. I volunteer to read new books for authors. One of the aspects of chronic illness is the specter of social isolation. Being here and joining with us makes us all stronger. Shelfari has helped me link with book lovers. Isn’t the internet a wonderful medium for finding those who have similar interests? Don’t be afraid to use reach out. Find my Shelfari page at www.shelfari.com/chronicchick or look to the left hand side and scroll through our Shelfari bookshelf.

That’s all the chicken scratch for today.

X

ChronicChick

Speaking of books, I’m going to invite each of you to take a look at (and then join) Shelfari. Shelfari is a free virtual bookshelf for book lovers. Using Shelfari, you can create a personal shelf of your books, see what your friends are reading, get and give recommendations for what to read next, create book lists, and even share your opinion on a book with friends on the growing Shelfari community. For those of us with chronic illness, we can not only look at those books that directly affect our lives but how about those books that just get us through the day!! Some times I want a cup of coffee (even if that darned MD that I adore has decaffed me) and a romance novel (ok, no darts at this point) and I can make it. Reading a great deal of medical books and journals…… yawn……. comes with the territory. I volunteer to read new books for authors. One of the aspects of chronic illness is the specter of social isolation. Being here and joining with us makes us all stronger. Shelfari has helped me link with book lovers. Isn’t the internet a wonderful medium for finding those who have similar interests? Don’t be afraid to use reach out. Find my Shelfari page at www.shelfari.com/chronicchick or look to the left hand side and scroll through our Shelfari bookshelf.

That’s all the chicken scratch for today.

X

ChronicChick

Tags: Fox and Friends Sunday, Janice Dean, Multiple Sclerosis, Shelfari, Teri Garr