Me and ME
You have to understand the world in which I grew up. My father and my uncle were both hospital administrators, which meant finding a job that wasn't flipping burgers was a little easier. I was an excellent radiology file clerk.
In my dad's career, he had many, many patients with spinal cord injuries. All sorts of others, too, but that's a biggie.
And so Dad's advice about preventing serious injury and/or death was simple: Don't ride a motorcycle, don't dive off anything, and never ever go to a chiropractor.
It's that last one, right? My eyes go wide when someone I know mentions going to a chiropractor. I keep my mouth shut but holy moly; it feels masochistic or at least is risky behavior, but only in my opinion. And I got that from Dad, for sure.
I am skeptical. I trust experts. I get the joke that if alternative medicine worked, it would be called just medicine. I want testing and reproducible results and peer review and all that jazz. Just the facts, ma'am.
I just shrug a lot though. You think my life has been all about exercising good judgment?
ME refers to myalgic encephalomyelitis, which was coined in the 50s for a phenomenon recognized in the 1930s, but then – it was observed 3000 years ago too, as I mentioned. In the 1970s, it became popular to call this "chronic fatigue syndrome" and to question whether in fact it was a physical or psychiatric problem.
Oddly, no one got better with psychiatric help.
I remember scoffing at this idea back in the 1990s, when I first heard about an acquaintance who couldn't come to something because she was too tired to leave the house, or something. "Chronic fatigue syndrome," right.
Look, if I felt bad every time I remembered being young and stupid, I would have jumped off a bridge years ago. I got a little wiser.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis is a mouthful, so it's usually abbreviated to ME, and often accompanied by CFS (ME/CFS, for chronic fatigue syndrome).
And I guess August 8 is something, but I don't do that or pay attention.
Half of people with long Covid convert to ME, and probably 100% over a year or so. I certainly acknowledged it a long time ago, although I just think of it as long Covid.
This all is a reason I still wonder if this all has been a delusion, a decision to take vows of aloneness, or something. I know it's not, but when you're a guy who relies on data and numbers and FACTS...it feels phony. Made up. There's no lab test to put a nice label on this for me.
Sometimes I feel like I should mention ME more. People with it have suffered for years with little understanding and no help. I suspect long Covid will bring it the attention (and research) it needs. I sure hope so.
