As I said I might do in the NNT updates, here's the latest on what the deal is with my fatigue. I went for a checkup in late November (I was supposed to go in a lot earlier, but my doctor went home sick that day, which seems ironic but I guess doctors are human too ). So I finally got in, and told her about my fatigue. She ordered a complete panel of blood tests, most of which came back normal (no diabetes, no anemia or leukemia, thank goodness, cholesterol just a weensy bit high). But my inflammation markers came back with numbers that made me wonder if the folks at the lab were on drugs that day. (20 on a scale of 0.7 to 5.) Unfortunately, they weren't.

Back for a followup, my doctor told me that in the absence of any obvious illness or infection, this high level of inflammation indicates autoimmune activity. That is, my immune system has begun attacking me. Or, in other words, my germ fighters think I'm the germ. She ordered a bunch more tests; unfortunately, this was on New Year's Eve and the lab courier decided to knock off early for the holiday and never showed up to collect the samples. So I had to go back several days later and get another four tubes of blood re-drawn. Anyway, she was testing to see what organs/systems were being targeted - most of the time, autoimmune disorders will target something specific, for example, as in rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. But everything came up negative, so the best she could do was that I have an unspecified/non-specific autoimmune disorder.

It's a chronic condition, meaning that it doesn't get cured and go away, but she was also very careful to reassure me that it isn't life-threatening. However, it's a serious quality-of-life issue, since it can be very disabling. She ordered me to stop taking synthetic vitamin supplements (partly because of this, I guess, and partly for other reasons) and to get more sleep and better quality sleep, exercise regularly, and take natural fruit and vegetable supplements along with an overall improvement in my diet. We're trying this for four months, to see if I have any improvement. Hopefully I won't have to go on medications, since the meds for this have pretty nasty side effects.

So far I'm noticing some improvement. Before, I had 2-3 usable hours a day. This included cooking, chores, errands (or any kind of being out of the house), exercise, showering, EVERYTHING. Now, most days I have 4 or so usable hours. Still not great - the standard is being able to work an 8 hour day and still be able to take care of necessary daily tasks, probably 10-12 hours a day. But definitely better than it was. I also have a lot of achiness and "brain fog," which I'm not sure are getting any better. And one thing I noticed since I started working on NNT again is that my hands hurt a lot more when I type than they did last summer. But I'm holding out hope that this is something I can learn to live with and enjoy a decent quality of life, even if it never completely goes away.