Poppy and I tell the girls at every available opportunity that smart people are the kind of people who make mistakes and then learn from them.

This Christmas I made a great mistake.  The children were all going to be home every day, and I had a ton of Christmas things to do, so I thought I would take one of my magic pills (Nuvigil) every day for a week, then crash on Christmas.  I didn't even make it three days.  If you don't have it to give, no amount of uppers will create it.  The result was that I crashed in a very real way on the Thursday before Christmas.  I threw a fit, I think it was on Friday, which involved me feeling more than a little suicidal, because, really, what's the fucking point of sleeping through your life?  This is a Stage.  I go through this Stage, then typically I pull my bootstraps up and Consult the Oracle.  Not that it has ever really helped my symptoms, but if you're looking for the latest research then you're Doing Something to try to fix things, and that means Hope.  Also, you can research on the couch.

This time the latest research mentioned they thing mast cells are involved.  I also read an interesting paper that suggested Quercetin and Chondroitin could be used to sort of muffle the mast cells, but quercetin is difficult to absorb.

Armed with this info, I slept as much as I could for, like, four days.  Then I bought some new goods. And now, after week of trying my new regimen, I can say that it's made a measurable huge difference.  I'm not cured.  Things are still off and weird, but I can truly say that I feel like I might be healing, and that next week I might feel better than I do this week.

Nothing very witty or insightful to say.  I just wanted to mark the point at which Thing Got Better, in case  it turns out to be true.

Love,
ephelba

PS
If you have chronic fatigue syndrome and wonder what my regimen is, I'll share:) Just email me.