Mouse Virus

The past two months I've constantly felt like I was about to pass out, which made it hard to read, write, watch tv, talk, drive and carry on conversations. Until last Saturday when it suddenly went away. And when I tell people I am feeling better they sometimes ask, "Why do you think that is?" or "What do you attribute that to?" and I have to wonder what kind of answer they are expecting. Next time someone asks me something like that, I am just going to answer, "mouse virus."

Even more annoying is the person who should really know better by now, who, when I told them I'd been feeling better this week asked, "So what now, are you going to go back to school?" This was really the last person who should have been asking me that. I wish I had given them a disappointed look, said "Really?" and walked out of the room. But instead I swallowed my pride and frustration and calmly said, "No, I'm not an idiot, " and explained how I'm wasn't feeling that much better. And even if I were, after a week of that much activity, I would crash again. Just like what happened the last time I tried to go back to school. And the last time...

Of course if I were miraculously cured and felt really good, how would I know if the post-exertional malaise was gone too? Would I just have to try and see? Go for a long walk and see if I wake up feeling poisoned the next day? Enroll in one class and see if I can handle that? Then next semester enroll in two?

Maybe by this time next year I could go to a doctor and they will actually be monitoring my viral load and will be able to tell, in a quantifiable way me how much better I am. That's the dream.

Actually though if you really suspected you were miraculously cured of CFS you could just take a two day exercise test. If you were cured, your VO2max and anaerobic threshold would not drop the second day.

It was encouraging to see so much written about the PNAS paper in the news. It was the most popular article on Monday in the LA Times health section. On Tuesday the news was even on my favorite NPR show, Marketplace. Why was it on a show about business news? Because this groundbreaking discovery was made entirely with private funds. No thanks to the CDC.

And speaking of the CDC, this is interesting: On the FDA website there's an FAQ page about the new study. Question 10 is about the discrepancy between the latest study, which found MLVs, and the CDC study, which found nothing. The FDA tested 34 of the CDC's samples, and they also found nothing. I'd very much like to know more about this. When enough studies are done, and there is a general consensus that MLVs cause CFS, which I think will happen, how will it look if none of the CDC's "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" samples have the virus?

Big News

Just found out the PNAS paper is coming out Monday. Now I'm all excited and I won't sleep. My life is strange.

Still Sick!

Somehow a whole month has gone by since my last blog. And somehow five years have gone by since I've finished a semester of college. Oh well.

I've been following the whole CDC/NIH/FDA XMRV thing very closely and with a lot of excitement. I just want them to hurry up and get it all sorted out.

My 24 urine test/hormone analysis revealed I do not have tertiary thyroid syndrome. (Yay!) It did show that my hGH (human growth hormone) was extremely low, low enough to warrant treatment. But we're not treating it because hGH activates XMRV.

Two or three years ago I thought low hGH might be what was causing all my problems. My bloodwork showed some kind of marker for low hGH so we had to do another test, but then it turned out my hGH was in range. Overall it was kind of a disappointment. Low hGH was such an easy fix. I'd have to learn to give myself frequent shots in my thigh, but other than that, easy fix.

But I'm still betting that XMRV will be shown to be the cause CFS, so no hGH.

Also, I got bit by a tick, somehow. In my last blog I said I'd take a months worth of doxycycline if I got bit by a tick again, but I'm not. I'm also betting that XMRV is the real cause behind chronic lyme.

I spent the last month slowly weaning off Klonopin. I thought I might sleep better without it. I'm finally off now, after having spent the last week taking 1/4 of a tablet every other night. I'm already wondering if it was a bad idea. My sleep is about the same, but really I'm supposed to be on Klonopin for its "neuro-protective" properties. I'm wondering if I haven't blogged all month because I don't have Klonopin protecting my neurons anymore.

And...I think I've already written as much as I can. That's it for me. Oh and by the way I am thinking more about stem cells again. I don't know why I stopped. What did I think I had to lose?

I just want to leave you with this quote I found in my old notes. It's about being really poor, but I think it applies to being really sick as well:

"Multiple Bee Stings"

Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn't apply to the poor. When we're poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated. This is where the bee stings come in: A person with one bee sting is highly motivated to get it treated. But a person with multiple bee stings does not have much incentive to get one sting treated, because the others will still throb. The more of a painful or undesirable thing one has (i.e. the poorer one is) the less likely one is to do anything about any one problem. Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems.

See this is why, despite having terrible tooth pain all month, I'm just this week getting to the dentist.

"What?? You still haven't gone to the dentist? Why? What if you have an infection?"

Oh yes, what a terrible thing that would be...

Dr. Lerner, Lyme Disease, and other Doctors

I was surprised to see Dr. Lerner’s face on the front page of Phoenix Rising last week. A lot of doctors are mentioned on the forums there but I didn’t remember ever coming across his name in a thread. I read the headline “Lerner antiviral Treatment Trial Succeeds” with mixed feelings. Clearly this is good news:

“Long term antiviral therapy was effective - very effective - in many of his patients. Many of them, while not completely cured, are able to work and lead normal lives again - an astounding finding in this field. Some are completely cured.”

Still I couldn’t help feeling a little left out as I read the article. Dr. Lerner was the first CFS doctor I ever saw. But on my second visit, after two long drives to Detroit, he told me I didn’t qualify for antiviral treatment. Instead, I had erlichiosis, a tick borne disease, and should do six weeks of IV-doxycycline.

This was two years ago in May. A friend sent me some articles about his work, and we both got excited and made plans to see him. Every night between then and my appointment was like Christmas Eve, but instead of staying up late thinking about all new toys I’d be getting, I read the pateint testmonials page of Dr. Lerner’s website over and over:

“Today I am CFS free! Dr. Lerner gave me back my life.”

“My activities are not restricted. I can travel, exercise, and work. I need only a normal adult amount of sleep, as opposed to 10 or 11 hours.”

“After receiving treatment from Dr. Lerner, my CFS symptoms went into remission. I graduated from graduate school in 1998.”

And this one stuck with me the most,

“When I first saw Dr. Lerner I was so ill, staying awake was a big chore for me. I would sleep for 19 hours at a time. I would take a shower but be too exhausted to blow my hair dry.”

The last one was my favorite because that was one of my first symptoms in high school. Eighth, ninth, tenth grade, hair straightening was like my religion and accounted for 45% of my personality. For example, freshman year in the locker room I noticed a girl who I’d seen before with curly hair was now wearing it straight. We struck up a conversation about blowdrying, and we remain best friends to this day.

The trick was it had to be done right after you showered to get it just right. Those curls came on fast. And then in a matter of weeks, all I could do when I came out of the shower was collapse on my bed. Post-shower naps became routine. The word “enervating” became part of my vocabulary, as in, “Showers are so enervating!” I had to wear ponytails all the time and put lots of anti-frizz gel on my air-dried hair. And yet, it never occurred to me this was a sign I was sick. I know I was always saying then, “I think I have mono” but the doctor kept telling me I didn’t, so I believed her, that I was normal. So if I was normal, than everyone else must be incredibly vain to put so much precious little energy into cleaning and styling their hair! I am a brilliant rationalizer.

It wasn’t until six years later when I started having what I thought of as “physical symptoms” like constant pain, that made me finally realize there was something really wrong. Reading that testimonial is what really made me identify with CFS as a disease. “Chronic Fatigue” wasn’t very concrete, but “Oh! I have the ‘too tired to shower and blow dry your hair’ disease!” rung true.

My mom and I sat across from Dr. Lerner at our first office visit and he told me I was going to get better. It was hard to believe, but I believed him anyway. Even when he told me I didn’t have the right blood test results for the valtrex/valcyte program, I believed when he said that treating erlichia was the answer. It happens that I was bitten by a tick before my first symptoms appeared, a year to 18 months before I got sick really. I was on vacation with my family and we went on a horseback ride in Wyoming. My mother was cautious of ticks, and made sure we all wore long pants, but tragically, it was 1998 and flared jeans were all the rage, so the tick had no trouble flying up to my leg and latching on for a good few hours.

I was actually really happy to have this diagnosis. It made me forget completely about Dr. Lerner and Valtrex. I told all my friends and family I didn’t have CFS, I had lyme disease. But there were some problems, no doctor I saw in Cleveland agreed. Because I didn’t want to live in Detroit for six weeks to get IV doxycycline from Dr. Lerner, I asked if he’d write me a letter I could take to an infectious disease specialist back home. This is how I found out that Lyme disease was something of a controversy. No doctor I saw agreed with Dr. Lerner’s diagnosis. They said there was no such thing as Chronic Lyme.

Now it was all making sense. There had been a couple of times over the years where “What about Lyme disease?” had occurred to either me or my mom. But whenever I asked my doctors about it they’d say, “You don’t have lyme disease. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” or “There’s no lyme disease in Wyoming or Ohio.” And so that was that.

I read Cure Unknown. I watched the trailers online for the yet to be released Under Our Skin documentary. I was convinced that this was what I had. There were descriptions of symptoms in Cure Unknown that I really identified with. There was even a description of writer’s block like what I went through in high school:

Mark, meanwhile, was teetering at the brink of professional disaster. He’d spent twenty years writing for national magazines and health foundations in New York City, yet now was so blocked he was in danger of losing his job as editor in chief of the newsletter Bottom Line Health. His memory, previously detailed and precise, had become so spotty he had trouble following the train of a simple story.

And another one that summed up perfectly in a few sentences what had been my high school "sleeping problem" experience:

Our youngest son, David, began to sleep – first so long that he could not do his homework or see his friends; eventually, so much (fifteen or more hours a day) that he could not get to class. Violating the strict attendance policy at his prep school, he was asked to leave.

The only difference is I left prep school before they could ask me to leave. And then I slept through public school. Looking back, if I couldn't have been diagnosed with CFS, I'd much rather have been diagnosed with Lyme than with depression. I'd rather have taken months of antibiotics than months of antidepressants.

I read more about Lyme. In Peggy Munson’s blog I found this quote from Amy Tan about her experience with Lyme:

"By day, my memory was held together with friable threads, my concentration was as easy to disperse as blown dust, and when I tried to read, I often found by the second page that I had no idea what the book was about. I did not possess any of the skills necessary to write fiction, for I was barely able to traverse the distance of sentence to sentence, let alone keep in mind a narrative that had to span four hundred pages and keep taut multiple intricacies of plot, characters, and thematic imagery."

Again, sounded like me.

I even wrote an e-mail to Pam Weintraub, who wrote Cure Unknown and asked her what I should do. I’d been taking oral doses of doxycycline every day, but Dr. Lerner wanted me on IV. The only way to do that was if I moved into a hotel in Detroit for six weeks, he wanted me in the area. I didn't want to do that if I didn’t have to. But Dr. Lerner was adamant and said if it was him or his family, he’d do it. Pam Weintraub wrote me back and said that IV doxycycline made a huge difference for her son in a way that oral did not.

I was going to do it. My mom and I drove up to Detroit and looked at different hotels. Then I though I should get a second opinion from another “Lyme literate doctor”, ideally someone who would set me up with IV antibiotics at home. I made an appointment to go to Mt. Kisko , NY and see Dr. Daniel Cameron, the only doctor I’d read about in the book who was still treating patients. When I got my blood work back from him, it said I did not have erlichia, but I did have Bartonella and two others, I forget which. Now I was getting an idea of how unreliable these tests were. Still, I continued on oral doxycycline. Dr. Cameron didn’t think I needed IV anything and that was fine by me. Later we switched to Cipro.

After a few months of daily antibiotics, I didn’t feel much different. My skin was beautiful and clear, but my eyes were so sensitive to light I couldn’t look out the window. I’d heard this was a symptom of lyme disease, but to me it seemed to get worse with the antibiotics. I wondered if it was a “Herxheimer Reaction”. When I asked Dr. Cameron if the antibiotics could be causing light sensitivity, he said no. But it sure went away quickly when I went off them.

The whole lyme thing was just too complicated. If you’ve read Cure Unknown you have some idea of how hard it is to beat lyme with antibiotics. I went back to CFS. I heard about Dr. Enlander and was able to get an appointment with him quickly and start on hepapressin. A few weeks later it was time for the appointment with Dr. Chia I’d scheduled 6 months earlier. Dr. Chia is the only CFS specialist I was referred to by an actual doctor. When my endocrinologist couldn’t find anything wrong with me she had said, "Dr Chia is doing some wonderful things for CFS."

I liked Dr. Chia, but I didn’t do his protocol, the oxymatrine. He said since I was on hepapressin it was basically the same idea, I should keep it up, and if it didn’t work, try the oxymatrine. I still have the prescription, but by the time I finished the hepapressin I was already moving on to Dr. Cheney. During my visit I told Dr. Chia how I’d been on antibiotics for lyme disease. He told me the thing about lyme disease is that anyone will feel better when you put them on antibiotics because they are anti-inflammatory.

My mom did call my doctor when I got a tick bite, but the doctor said the same thing then they say now. If there’s no rash or flu symptoms, don’t worry. So we didn’t. For a long time I thought that if I had gotten antibiotics early on I might never have gotten sick. Now I’m not sure.

I forgot about Lyme for awhile, but when Under Our Skin came out I still wanted to see it. I went to the LA premiere in a little theater on Wilshire. I’m sure there were less than fifty people there, probably less than forty. I cried through the whole thing. I think a lot of the audience did. I don’t remember much about it now, but I walked out with a green rubber bracelet. If I ever get another tick bite, I’m going to want some doxycycline, just in case. But I don't tell people I have lyme anymore, I'm in the CFS camp.

Night Owl/Stem Cells/Resilient Amoeba

5/26/2010 01:18am

Nocturnalism is only a problem if everyone else in the world is not nocturnal.

I meant to write this blog yesterday afternoon. I knew what I wanted to write - not at that exact moment- but I knew it was there in my head somewhere. I'd thought about it before, and I just needed to concentrate and find it and get it all out. I tried to sit up at the computer, but after two minutes or so I was lying on the couch and all I could think about was how warm the sun was. I tried again to write this morning but that didn't happen. Then I was really going to write this evening but I couldn't, I couldn't do anything. Now that it's 1 am and my head is clear and I'm able to write I can blame my failed attempts on one of two things: brain fog, or nocturnalism.

I think there was a time I thought nocturnalism was my whole problem. I thought it was just my unfortunate natural rhythm, and how would everyone else feel if they were supposed to sleep all day and work all night? Probably the way I did.

In college after I'd gotten enough studying done, I'd still stay up all night looking up things that interested me in LexisNexis, and one thing that interested me was nocturnalism, which sadly is not a really a word but should be. I remember reading an article by a woman who had been trying to write a book, and one day she realized the only way she'd ever get it done was to give into her natural tendency to be nocturnal. Once she "gave in", She went from barely writing a paragraph a day to writing pages and pages through the night. She woke up in time for dinner with her family, started writing when they went to bed, had breakfast with them, and went to bed again after they left for school. I wondered if that was the only way I would ever get anything done in my life. My noctural friend and I fantasized about a college where we could take classes from 5pm-5am.

Lately I've been laying the blame for my "day-night reversal" totally on the CFS. It's a typical symptom, it's a sign of impending adrenal collapse, etc. But the other day when I was repeating to my dad what my acupuncturist had promised me, about "naturally feeling more alert during the day and more like sleeping at night as I got better", when I was complaining about my nocturnal tendencies, Dad laughed and reminded me that the tendency never went away for him. We're both congenital night owls. Laying awake in bed has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I used to make up lots of games to try and fall asleep. I counted slowly in my head up to the thousands. I read hiding under the blankets with a flashlight. I thought of this today when a friend told me she was thinking of trying melatonin. (I've tried it, didn't do anything.) She said that two different families she babysat for gave it to their little boys. Kids today! Why can't they hide and read like we did back in my day, instead of bothering their parents with their awakeness so much that they are forced to drug them? ("Awakeness" also needs to be made a word.)

I definitely get the feeling I should be ashamed for my nocturnalism, that it's abnormal and immoral and unproductive. I feel guilty staying up to write this, despite the fact I couldn't sleep anyway no matter how hard I "tried". And what about "morning people"? Life was always so much kinder to them, particularly in middle school when the bus came at six am. I remember telling my friends how I kept getting to the bus stop later and later because it was getting harder and harder to wake up in the morning. One girl said, "Really? As soon as I open my eyes in the morning I want to get out of bed. I don't get it - wanting to stay in bed when you're not asleep anymore?" It was a critical moment for me, realizing that there were people like this out there, and that I hated them.

"Dr. Byron M. Hyde, a physician who studies CFS in Ottawa, Canada, has suggested that major sleep disturbance may be one of the very first symptoms of CFS to develop."*

That's my segue from the sleep problems part of this blog to the CFS part.

I've decided to put off the stem cell decision for awhile. I'm going to make an appointment to see Dr. Cheney again in October. Then it will have been one year of treatment with cell signaling factors (CSF's). My echo terrain map showed improvement in April, after six months, so maybe it will be close to normal in another six. And in the mean time maybe I will start feeling "functional improvement."

From Dr. Cheney's 2008 article:

Through the first six months of therapy, there was no significant improvement in functional measures (KPS) but some notable changes were seen in both echocardiography (drop in IVRT, p < 0.00006) and in impedance cardiography (rise in stroke volume, p < 0.00004). However, during the next six months, notable improvement was reported by some patients attributable, by most participants, to the heart/mesenchyme porcine extract.

There was a time when I thought that I might as well shoot myself up with placental stem cells, I'm already lathering up twice a day with CSF's from bison. But it's not the same thing. Dr. Cheney has really done a good job making the case for his confidence in the safety of the stem cell transfusions, but I'm still going to wait. My dad read the rest of Stem Cells for Dummies for me (I'll get to it soon) and he said "On a scale of +/-1-10 I went from + 5 in favor to -8 against using Stem Cells for CFS."

The main impression I got from talking to him is that it's still a highly experimental treatment and there's a lot that isn't known about stem cells. I'd already decided to put off my decision before he told me this though. I'm not ready. I need more information, and if there isn't any, I need to more time to mull over what I've got, though I'm well aware I shouldn't mull too long. My one year CSF anniversary seemed like a good deadline.

I think Dr. Cheney is going to make the human derived CSF's available soon. HPE- Human placental extract. They're from the same source as the stem cells you'd get in Panama, but it's not the cells themselves, just the signaling factors. Not sure what exactly that means, except that it probably won't work as well as stem cells, but I know at least one patient on the trial has made a huge improvment on the echo cardiogram, although without any "clinical improvement." But that might come in time.

In the words of CFSpatientadvocate:

In regards to this last item Dr. Cheney related his enthusiasm about a new gel that he has made from afterbirth material. Citing studies on hamsters, Cheney described a process where non-stem cell material is extracted from stem cells and injected back into the hamsters, curing them as if it were stem cells. Dr. Cheney has made a similar gel from human afterbirth that gets a very strong reaction on his Echo machine, much stronger than any existing CSF. He is very excited about this.

I do wonder if I am being too cautious, especially when I see other people I know a lot more willing and ready for stem cells than I am. But I just don't want to do it if I don't have to and I'm hoping, maybe naively that if I keep up with the CSF's, the human CSF's, acupuncture, herbs, rest, pilates (which is supposed to strengthen the immune system) the the right diet, and even the right attitude, I can get well without stem cells. I've also been a little more open minded about ARV's and I've been reading treatingxmrv.blogspot.com. At this point though I think I'd still try stem cells before ARV's, but who knows.

If there is a real chance to be healthy again, I will not let it pass me by.

Some long awaited test results:

Mold: On the ERMI scale of 1 to 4, 1 being safe 4 being dangerous. My apartment got a 1.9. I'm in the moderate zone. So I don't think I'll be moving...

Amoeba: I tested "equivocal" twice by saliva. Then I did two weeks on the really strong antibiotic Alinia, which I am still recovering from, GI-wise. Guess what? My test for parasites went from equivocal to positive! How did that happen? For now the doctor is saying maybe we tested too soon and I should do the test again. He's sending me a kit. If it's not negative this time I don't think I'm going to do the antibiotic again. My digestion has actually been pretty decent.

Thyroid: Still don't know if I have tertiary thyroid syndrome. My blood test (TSH, T3, T4) results were in the normal range but it's the urine test results I am waiting for.

Most annoying symptom lately: Burning sensation in the back of my throat that is making me want to constantly drink massive amounts of water.

*Neenyah Ostrom, America's Biggest Cover-Up: 50 More Things Everyone Should Know About The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic And Its Link to AIDS

"Remember, insomnia is only a problem if you have a job or a reason to live."

I've been busy. Sure, people with CFS can be busy. When you need 12 hours of sleep each night, if you have one thing to do, then that day, you are busy.

As part of my quest for perfect health and immortality I thought it was about time I started exercising. Nothing aerobic of course, but something to at least "get moving" and "circulate the lymph" and maybe even reverse "the downward spiral of deconditioning" I'd been in ever since I was pretty much bed-ridden those six months.

I put it off for awhile because I wanted to find the perfect physical therapist or personal trainer, and a few months ago I did. Except she's not actually a physical therapist or a personal trainer; as she would say, "Animals have trainers, people have teachers."

Last week I had three hour and a half sessions. I plan on doing three this week too. I almost didn't make it this morning for my 2:00 appointment. I was still in bed at 1:30 when she called and asked if I could come at 2:30 instead. "Sure, no problem."

Her studio is right in my neighborhood, it's like a eight minute drive, (though if this wasn't LA it'd be a three minute drive) any longer and I could never keep it up. But the coolest thing about her is that she had CFS. I was skeptical at first, but I believe her now. I think she was skeptical of me too. We'd both met people who like to say they have CFS when they don't really.

She's largely recovered now, after 20 years. She works, takes long walks, takes out her own trash, cooks, shops, but still is careful not to take on too much. She attributes her recovery mostly to juice fasting. She wants me to get into it eventually, but I'm wary. I could say she is an inspiration, "If she recovered than so can I!" etc, but that's not how my mind works.

I did make it to my session today. It really feels good to be exercising again. Sometimes it feels like I'm working really hard, holding a lunge for so long my legs are shaking and I want to cry, but I've never been sore yet, so we aren't working too hard. We haven't pushed my limits, at least for my muscles.

I'm afraid I'm pushing some kind of limit though. It's 5:00am, I'm awake, and I feel fine. No desire to sleep at all. I wish I felt this good during the day. I do actually feel some kind of "energized" after a workout, but it isn't useful energy and it doesn't last long. I'm afraid I'm approaching serious day-night reversal again. I feel like I'm in school and it's the second week of the semester. Insomnia is so much less stressful when you have nowhere to be in the morning. (Or afternoon...) But I've scheduled physical therapy Monday, Wednesday, Saturday and acupuncture Tuesday and Friday. Thursdays and Sundays are my only days off.

I hope I get some sleep tonight, can wake up at noon, brush my teeth, take my medicine, get dressed, eat something, and drive myself to acupuncture, or call and ask a friend to drive me if I'm too brain-dead. Brain-fogged...

I don't want to give up on the workouts yet though. I'm already getting stronger. When I bend down to open the lowest dresser drawer, I stand up again without even thinking about it. There's a lot of little things like this that are tremendously encouraging. I'm hoping eventually it will really help with my upper back and shoulder pain, and maybe some of the pain, tingling and numbness in my arms and legs.

Maybe I should cut back to two times a week, but I'm going to try for three a little longer. This is my chance to really learn something, and thus feel a sense of accomplishment which can translate into satisfaction and happiness. It feels so good to be immersed in something to learn, to have a teacher again.

But it's not worth it if it pushes me back into nocturnalism. Nothing is worse than not being able to wake up morning after morning when you have somewhere you're supposed to be. Already my mornings are getting shorter and shorter. I have a feeling tomorrow I will jump out of bed at the last minute, take my medicine, and run out the door. I'll be a few minutes later, and I'll hate it. I won't shower, I'll feel dirty all day. And then there's a good chance on Wednesday I will wake up just enough to call and say "I'm not going to make it in today," and go right back to sleep until three or four pm. Or I might be too tired to call and just be a no show.

I know this pattern well. It's why I haven't tried to go back to school this year again.

I hate it when it comes to this. But it's either this or be pre-emptive by scheduling nothing, and I can only do that for so long too. There's still a part of me that doesn't know it's sick. It's been through a lot of disappointment.

I used to be able to deal with the day-night reversal a little better. I drank a lot of coffee and red bull, that helped.

I wrote this in early 2007, a few months after I dropped my classes mid-semester for the third time, to describe my "Denocturnalizing" process. I knew something was wrong with me, but I was a few months away from learning about CFS. I wasn't exactly blaming myself anymore, I'd realized by now my sleep problems were not ordinary, were beyond the powers of human discipline, but I still felt a sense of stigma.

Up early? Or up late?

People ask me this a lot even though they must already know the answer. Gas station cashiers ask when I come in at 3am to buy coffee. For all they know I could be up starting on some fabulous road trip, or my job as a morning anchorwoman. For all they know.

The coffee shop down the street opens at 6:30. I was there by 6:50. Apparently they've had espresso-banana smoothies all this time and I never knew it. So I had one this morning for breakfast. They're very good. I'll have to add it to my Map of Excellent Drinks. (The best bubble tea is in Cornell, the best chocolate milk in Syracuse, mocha colas are in Ohio Arabicas, etc.) There was one other person there at that early hour. She was wearing bulky headphones and typing on her laptop. (Non-macintosh)

More people started coming in. By the time I left at 8:30, there were about six people sitting around with coffee and newspapers and laptops. I watched in amazement as they entered and exited, probably on their way to their jobs. I focused particularly on this tall bald man across from me reading the paper. He'd been there at least a good half hour. I wondered, does he do this everymorning? And I imagined myself asking him,

"Do you do this every morning?"

...and the conversation took off in my head,

"Do what?"

"This! Get up early, shower, put on a warm looking cream colored sweater, stop at the coffee shop, drink a red-eye and read the paper for a half an hour before you go to work?"

"Oh. Why, yes I do, more or less."

"Fascinating!"

And then I'd turn to the girl on her laptop,

"Do you do this every morning?"

She takes off her headphones when she sees me speaking to her.

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry. I was just asking, do you do this every morning?"

"Do what?"

"Wake up"

"Yes I do. I get up every morning before I go to my job at the hospital."

"Interesting."

"Why? Don't you wake up every morning?"

"Me? Certainly not! I haven't woken up the last four mornings."

"What do you mean you didn't wake up? What did you do?"

"Just kept sleeping right through until the evening. Eventually I would get out of bed, but by then I'd have been merging in and out between consciousness and dreaming for so many hours that you could hardly call it waking up. That certain verb requires the action of the transition from one state of mind to the next to be completed within a half an hour at the most."

"I guess."

"I'm only here because I've been awake all night and need to remain so for the rest of the day."

"Ok well, good luck with that."

And I sleepily journaled this a few months ago. I'd just seen the new Alice in Wonderland:

"Why, there's only one way to get to tomorrow, and that's sleep. Sleep is the only way to get to tomorrow."

"But I didn't sleep at all last night, and here I am."

"Are you?"

Title quote from an old Onion article.

Endless Vacation

I'm supposed to be making a decision right now, aren't I? Something about stem cells?

It really has been on my mind constantly, and at one point I had almost decided: the risk is minimal, the potential benefit is immeasurable, so it isn't a matter of if, but when, and if it's only a matter of when, isn't sooner better than later?

"If not now, when?"

But there's still a part of me that's afraid of the unknown. The unknown being, "Who's cells are these anyway? And does even it matter? Does it? Even a little??" I decided to conquer my fear of the unknown with knowledge. I decided to acquire this knowledge by going to Barnes and Noble and purchasing a copy of Stem Cells for Dummies.*

I've never liked any of the for Dummies books. I don't have a lot of time (energy) to spare so if I'm going to read a book it has to be not only informative but well-written and preferably enjoyable. That has not been my experience with any of the Dummies books. But after googling Google Books and scouring Amazon Listmania I came to the conclusion that this was probably my best bet. There just aren't many books about stem cells out there, at least not in the context I'm looking for. If you want to find a book about embryonic stem cells: ethics, morals, dreams, possibilities, then you have plenty to choose from. But adult stem cells, specifically "cord blood" stem cells, not so much.

I figure I should put some kind of deadline on my decision, like, a month from now, whenever now is. I haven't actually done that yet. June 10th?

So far I have only gotten through the first chapter of Stem Cells for Dummies. That was three days ago. I read it in study mode, pen and highlighter in hand, ready to reread what I didn't understand, to find the most important points.

So far, this is what I've taken to be the most important points:

1. It's funny there's this sudden big fuss! Stem cell research is hardly new!

2. However, we hardly understood anything about how stem cells work at all!

3. All stem cell treatments are highly EXPERIMENTAL and DANGEROUS

4. Beware of "patient testimonials" and "the placebo effect"

I put the book down after the first chapter and haven't returned to it because it made me really sad. It's making me "face reality", and it's depressing.

There's this whole delicate balancing of dichotomy one has to deal with when one is living with chronic illness: on the one hand, life sucks. On the other hand, you have to make the best of it. I worded it broadly like that so that healthy people can relate. The thing is though, I don't think they really can. When you are sick you can never forget the bad part for too long because no matter how long you can go walking around thinking positive and looking on the bright side there will come a day when you are in so much pain you can't get out of bed, you can't think, you can't read, you can't talk, you can't do anything to take your mind off the fact that you are really really sick and may never get better.

You could liken this problem to this article today in The Onion, imagining what it'd be like if the prolific political dissident Noam Chomsky tried to take his mind of things just for one day:

"Sources said Chomsky took what was supposed to be a refreshing drive in the countryside, only to find himself obsessing over the role petroleum plays in the economic and military policies that collude with multinational corporate powers."

"All right, all right," the noted critic and philosopher said, "I'm going back home, writing one—just one—reasoned, scathing essay, and getting it out of my system. But then I'm definitely going back to the park to walk around and just enjoy the nice weather. I'm serious."

"Because there's got to be more to life than the way that wage slavery strips the individual of his or her inherent dignity and personal integrity," Chomsky continued. "Right?"

For a while there I thought I should be miserable all the time. Anger, depression, sadness, they have a purpose - they motivate you to change. But eventually I realized I could be happy and accept my situation without losing the will to keep trying to change it. I've gotten pretty good at fooling myself into thinking my life is not so bad. After all, the world is full of misery, suffering...wage slavery. Why should I be an exception? All and all, life is ok.

But then here I am holding a book that might as well been called Stem Cells for the Desperate. I'm reminded I have a terrible disease and that yes, things are pretty bad. In gleefully thinking ahead to what I would do if I became a "functional cure", wondering which college I would go back to, what I'd major in, I'm forced to remember how sad I was, how much grief I went through, having to give these things up in the first place.

On the night I had the bad insomnia, before I wrote a blog, I wrote a lot of other things including a list of the happiest times of my life. There were no rules for the list except it could only consist of the first things that came to mind. I came up with twelve, paused, thought a little more, and ended up with twenty. Some were single days or events: an awesome road trip, the time in 7th grade I stayed home sick by myself and spent the entire day on the internet. (Sounds totally ordinary and even tedious now but at the time it felt like the biggest, guiltiest most wonderful indulgence of my life.) Most items are longer periods of time: freshman year in high school, freshman year in college, the six months I spent learning guitar, "all of childhood."

When it was done I realized they all fell into two main categories, times I was working really hard and times I was on some kind of "vacation." I also realized that they pretty much stopped after 2004, the last year I was well enough to work a full time job or complete a semester of college. This is what I frantically typed in my hypergraphic state:

Sadly there are no happy times after 2004, except a road trip or two. That’s six years of unhappiness. No offense to the people in my life at this time, it’s not you, it’s the disease. Fleeting moments like awesome concerts (Faint/Fever, Hives, Dandy Warhols, Momus, Divine Comedy, Phillip Glass, Terry Riley), good books (Middlesex, Pride and Prejudice, Strange and Norrell, Outliers...) discovering new favorite bands, listening to good music, the time ____ _____ kissed me on the cheek, don’t make it. Notice those are all passive experiences. They enrich real experiences, but can’t produce real happiness themselves. CFS makes you settle for a life of passive experiences.

Half of these are about working hard, half of them are about play, travel, vacation, relaxing, etc. With CFS you can’t do either. Also notice there is nothing to do with food there, even though I love new food, new restaurants, etc. But I don’t think back to when I used to come home from school and zone out in front of the tv and eat a box of goldfish crackers as a particularly happy time. So even though there’s been some things that you’d think would be on the list...World Cup Trip, Alaska Trip, learning IPA (I almost put that one), they just didn't make it because they occurred after 2004.

Work hard, play hard. I first heard that expression from my Dad my first year in high school. Now I can’t do either. Sleep hard, try hard, see no results...life is hard. Everything in vain. Pain, insomnia, alienation. Denial. Not things that make humans happy. So what have been the happiest times these last five years? I could pick them out, but, they wouldn’t really be happy times, just “happiest” in bad times. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy again unless I can work, learn, and play. All I have now is tiny pieces of these old things. Except the internet, I can spend as much time as I want on the internet, but it’s not a treat anymore, is it?

I came to the conclusion that being unable to work or play, I was living in a kind of purgatory, and the only way I would ever know happiness again was to get healthy enough to work (or go to school) and the only way to do that was with stem cells.

And yet, I'm still not sure. For one thing, there's no guarantee that if I got the transfusion I would be healthy enough to go back to school. There's also no guarantee that even if I feel better enough to go to school for one year, even just part time, that I'd still be healthy the next year. It might wear off. I imagined a life where I was going to school part time in the spring and fall, and instead of spending my summers at internships or abroad, going down to Panama every summer for a reboot, for new DNA, and then spending three months regenerating in my cocoon so I could go back to school in the fall. At that rate, if I didn't do a double major or any extra electives, theoretically I could graduate in six years and it would only cost $60,000 + tuition. Hurray!

I still haven't totally let go though of the myth of stem cells as a magic bullet. Maybe I'd only need one transfusion and I could go back to school full time. Who knows. And if I believe that, then I also have to believe that if I don't rush right out and get them, it means I am afraid of life, that I don't want to go to school, that I don't want to get better.

I know that's nonsense, but, sometimes it's how I think. It's stories like this from Dr. Cheney that make me think this way: The only person who didn't feel any difference from the stem cells was a 56 year old lawyer who was working 60 hour weeks and felt terrible. He wanted to work 60 hour weeks and feel good. (He still had CFS, it's a wide-ranging disease.) When I heard that I did not think, "Whoa, that guy is a workaholic who's being way too risky and using stem cells like they're the fountain of youth." I thought, "Damn, this guy loves life way more than I do."

And then when I found out they were now doing intrathecal transfusions, (transfusions into the spinal column) he said there had been six so far just last week, but there were six people down there now, and when they heard how great the other six felt they all said they wanted intrathecal transfusions too! Who are these people? Don't they know about decision trees???

I can't even think about intrathecal transfusions right now. As I understand it, injections into the bloodstream are pretty safe, your body knows what to do. The brain on the other hand, is stupid. That's why when embryonic stem cells are transplanted in the brain they just multiply and multiply and you get tumors. Is it the same with adult cells? Is it the same when they go into the spinal column? I don't know, and I don't mind waiting a little longer to find out.

I'm always wary of being thought a malingerer. I assume everyone with CFS is. By 2006 I had started and dropped out of three consecutive semesters. However, I had never heard of CFS, I still had no abnormal test results and no other diagnosis than "depression." Also, I wasn't the only kid to ever take a semester off. I knew lots of people who had dropped out mid-semester or planned some time off to goof off or find themselves or whatever it is angsty, young, thoughtful people do. For awhile I thought I was one of them, but by 2006 I had realized there was something really wrong with me even if the doctors couldn't find it yet, that no one else was this tired. It took my friends and family a little longer to come to this realization though. There was one particularly painful instance, when my best friend, who had taken some semesters off herself, but was now pushing through to finish and get her degree, essentially told me that I'd been on vacation long enough, and it was time "to stop fucking around and grow up." Is that what she thought I'd been doing all this time? I told her, rather meekly, that I didn't think of this as "time off", that I thought of it as "sick time." She just rolled her eyes and it was the end of the conversation.

I think it's in Stricken, can't find the exact quote: a teenage boy who gets ME/CFS and is out of school for the whole year. His friends think it must awesome to stay home from school and play video games all the time. "Yeah it's nice, for a month, but not for nine." After nine months, even if he isn't anxious to go back to math class and homework, he at least must be aching to ride his bike around the neighborhood. And then the longer you're sick, the sicker you get...

To anyone who thinks CFS is an endless vacation, I would invite them to think so in the context of the Ramone's song, Endless Vacation. You only need to listen to the first few seconds to get the picture.

*This is not meant to be a review of Stem Cells for Dummies, like I said, I've only read the first chapter and skimmed through the rest. Even though I am disappointed that there just isn't enough of the kind of research I was looking for out there, so far, I actually think this is a really well written and informative book, despite not mentioning Chronic Fatigue Syndrome once in it's 360 pages, like everything else I've read about stem cells.