Poll: What is your most disabling symptom?

[Keela Too]

My take is that all the other symptoms are bad enough, but what adds additional disability is PEM. I either overexert myself in trying to overcome, however temporarily, the restrictions put on me by the other symptoms and trigger PEM and have my low functioning level forcibly reduced, or I limit myself in an attempt to avoid PEM in order to achieve a more consistent, but reduced, level of functioning. Either way, I can't do as much as I potentially could.

This!!

 

[Binkie4]

I have picked sleep problems because it is the issue currently bothering me most. I am regularly getting no sleep at all which makes the pem easier to trigger, the OI is worse as are the cognitive issues and pain. Previously I would probably have selected pem or maybe OI.

 

[MeSci]

GI issues recently reared their ugly 'head' again, all severely limiting what I can physically do - but the thing that's causing me the most worry/concern, and is likely to cause me major issues, impacting on other symptoms, and, probably irrelevantly, having been costing me around half the income I should have had over the last several years, and likely to cost me roughly half the income I currently have, is cognitive impairment.

Same here. I lost a few £thousand a few years ago because I could no longer fill in forms to claim benefit. 'Luckily' I then received my work pensions.

 

[MeSci]

If I could eliminate just one symptom it would probably be cognitive impairment, on the basis that it is the most frustrating, humiliating, and distressing symptom.

Indeed it is all of those things. You feel that people think you are an idiot, as you just can't find your way through the fog and understand what they are saying or what you were intending to do or say.

 

[alex3619]

You feel that people think you are an idiot, as you just can't find your way through the fog and understand what they are saying or what you were intending to do or say.

To illustrate this point, over a decade ago I was trying to get on a bus. The driver was saying things, possibly because I was having trouble with the new ticket system. I had no idea what he was saying. So he said it louder, thinking I was deaf. After a couple of tries he started enunciating very distinctly, slowing down his speech till I could follow it.

On another occasion I am sure the driver thought I was stoned.

 

[Jaybee00]

Other poll about symptoms:

https://www.s4me.info/threads/if-yo...ur-me-cfs-symptoms-which-would-they-be.19187/

Thanks—I even think there was another one.

 

[forestglip]

Cognitive impairment probably. At least if it was only physical fatigue, I could still do online classes, do remote work, or have conversations longer than a few sentences.

 

[TigerLilea]

For me it has always been exhaustion (fatigue). I don't have the desire to sleep through the day, but I wake up exhausted as if I had already had a busy day, and I go to bed at night even more exhausted. It has been this way now for the past 33 years.

 

[Solstice]

I guess at the moment it's PEM, just with a slight edge over other problems. The reason I chose PEM is because I always have to think about every little thing I do and the potential trade-off.

Cognitive issues, lack of energy are very debilitating in their own right. If it was just that I could simply lie down or skip over some stuff I couldn't comprehend at that time.

PEM just requires so much planning around. Do I go throw a ball with my nephew for a bit or is that gonna land me in bed for the next 2 days?