Melissa Kaplan's
Chronic Neuroimmune Diseases
Information on CFS, FM, MCS, Lyme Disease, Thyroid, and more...
Last updated May 7, 2014

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Note: If you have been diagnosed with CFS and/or FM, and have been tested for Lyme but came up negative, please read my Lyme page, and seriously consider getting tested again, with the right type of test. Many of us have been saying for years that Lyme and other tickborne diseases are the cause of the CFS symptoms in a major subpopulation of people diagnosed with CFS. It doesn't matter if you think you've never been bitten by a tick, or if you never go hiking or encounter deer. If you live where there are cats or dogs in your neighbors yards, or where there are squirrels or birds, or raccoons and opossums passing through in the night, you are living in tick territory. Lyme Disease Presenting as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Page Index:
Activities of Daily Living/Functional Capacity Forms
Cardiopulmonary Issues
Children and CFS/FM
Communicating with Physicians & Disability Reviewers
Community & Social Impact
Diagnostics
Neurocognitive Issues
Symptom Checklists
Have You Considered..?

 

Symptom Checklists
Master Symptom List for CFS, FM, CMP & Lyme Disease - Kaplan
CFS & FM Symptom Comparison Table - Kaplan
CFS Symptom Checklist - Goldstein

CFS/FM Symptom Checklist - Berne
Fibromyalgia and/or Chronic Myofascial Pain - Starlanyl
Gulf War Illness

 

Activities of Daily Living/Functional Capacity
Daily Activities Worksheet (PDF)
Karnofsky Scale

 

Community & Social Impact
CFS Far More Common than AIDS, HIV Infection or Lung Cancer
Fibromyalgia: Not All In Your Head
Fighting a Mystery Disease
Looking Good But Not Feeling Fine
Politics, Science and the Emergence of a New Disease
2004: New Study Finds High Prevalence Of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

 

Diagnostics
Balance the Th1/Th2 Immune System
Blood Draws
Dysautonomias (Autonomic Nervous System disorders)
Hemodynamics Instability in CFS
CFS and Fibromyalgia: Caused by the same disease?
Community-Based Study of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Disease of a Thousand Names
Does chronic Lyme disease play a role in CFIDS?
Dr. Nancy Klimas Answers Questions on CFS
Dysregulation Spectrum Syndrome
Enterovirus related metabolic myopathy: a postviral fatigue syndrome
Epstein-Barr & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Fatigue Syndromes and the Ætiology of Autoimmune Disease
What is the Fibromyalgia Syndrome and Why is it Important? (ACR)
Fibromyalgia Pain Isn't All In Patient's Heads, New Brain Study Finds
Fibromyalgia Information (Canada)
Fibromialgia y síndrome crónico de la fatiga en español
Fibromyalgia (FM) and Chronic Myofascial Pain (CMP)
Further Organic Abnormalities in CFIDS (Orthostatic Intolerance)
Gene Expression Research in CFS
Home Environment Testing Kits
Hypovolemia and CFIDS
Important Tests for CFS, FM and RA
Immune System Overviews
The Interface of Lyme Disease with CFS and FM: Diagnostic and Treatment Issues
Intimations of Infection in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & Fibromyalgia
Keep Your Eye On CFIDS (Ophthalmic Irregularities)
Late and Chronic Lyme Disease: Symptom Overlap with CFS & FM
Massachusetts CFIDS Association CFS Primer for Physicians
Neuroendocrine Abnormalities in CFS Deserve More Comprehensive Study
On Liver, Thyroid and Toxicity
Red Blood Cell Shape Abnormality
RNAse-L Enzyme Dysfunction
Second World Conference on CFS and Related Disorders
Some Doctors Operate on People Diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue
Study Identifies Three Subgroups of Fibromyalgia
Testing Laboratories for CFS, FM, Metals Toxicity, Other Disorders
The Physical Basis of CFS
Uncertainty of Hair Analysis for Trace Metals

 

Neurocognitive Issues
Differentiating Between CFIDS and Primary Depression
Late Effects of Concussions and Head Injuries
Memory: The Art of Drawing A Blank
The MMPI-2 Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Profile
Neurocognitive Impairment in CFS
Protocol for Cognitive Assessment for CFIDS
Relationships of Cognitive Difficulties to Immune Measures, Depression and Illness Burden in CFS
Should you get a neuropsych workup?

 

Cardiopulmonary Issues
Dysautonomias (Autonomic Nervous System disorders)
On Cryptostrongylus pulmoni and multisystemic illness
Tricky Heart May Cause CFS
Suspected New Species of Chronic Roundworm Parasite, Cryptostrongylus pulmoni, Associated with CFS in Blinded Trials

 

Communicating with Physicians and Disability Reviewers
Frustrations of a Physician Treating CFS
Can we talk? How to communicate with your doctor
Trying to Look Good When You Feel Like Crap: Don't
More articles...

Is your physician putting down your Internet research?
Google Searches Out the Diagnosis, Stat

 

Have You Considered...Lyme Disease and Other Tickborne Infections?
If you have been sick for years, and along the way were diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and/or fibromyalgia syndrome, and have not responded significantly, or positively at all for very, to many different treatment protocols that seem to be very helpful to others who were diagnosed with CFS and/or FM, then what ever made them sick isn't what has made you sick.

The word "syndrome" just means "a consistent set of symptoms for which no as yet identified cause exists."

"Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" is an umbrella term for a set of symptoms shared by too many people to logically ignore (i.e., it isn't mass hysteria, hypochondria, or Munchausen's) assigned to a group of people who share the same constellation of symptoms, but who may not have become ill in the same way.

Some were later found to have widespread systemic Candida infections (fixed by diet), some mercury toxicity (fixed by chelation and, in extreme cases, removal of amalgam fillings). Some actually had severe hypothyroidism, or abnormalities in other hormone levels, all of which were corrected and remain corrected by monitoring medication levels. Some actually have relapsing/remitting Epstein-Barr virus or Cytomeagaly virus, or both. Some actually were infected by a mycoplasma. Some actually turned out to have chronic iron deficiency or iron storage disease, both not detected by standard iron tests.

For many of us, however, while we may have had many of the things mentioned above, and many other things besides, none of the treatment protocols that prove effective in restoring others to normal or near-normal pre-onset levels of health and functioning worked for us.

Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of doctors in California, where I live, have become not only cognizant that we some widespread Borrelia burgdorferi (the organism that causes Lyme disease) living in ticks throughout almost every county in our state, but that a huge number of patients originally diagnosed with CFS and FM, who have not been found to have any other illness/disorder that, when treated, significantly reduced their CFS & FM symptoms, are in fact infected with B. burgdorferi and, as is common in other Lyme-endemic areas, one or more other organisms who happily inhabit ticks carrying B. burgdorferi.

In the small support group to which I have been associated for over a decade, an increasing number of us are turning up positive for Lyme disease when tested using newer tests. Some of us requested or agreed to be treated for Lyme despite negative test results, to find that subsequent tests showed that we had chronic infections and, in some cases, reactivated or new infections.

In my case, I had negative results in 1991 and 1999, in tests done by three different labs. Because of getting a positive test result in 1999 for Babesia, another tickborne organism, commonly found with B. burgdorferi, my doctor and I decided to start me on a treatment protocol for Lyme disease as well as for the Babesia.

It wasn't until several months after I had completed an initial course of high-dose doxycycline that I finally got a positive IgG Western blot result for Lyme. (A retest of my Babesia showed that treatment knocked the organisms titers down to "non-infective" levels.)

Am I cured and back at work? No. But for now, I am not quite as sick, and some important--to me-quality of life indicators started improving several months after I finished the first course of doxy, including not being nearly as chemically sensitive to the chemicals associated with daily living that our society exposes us to.

That's more than can be said for all the other treatment protocols I have tried through the years for CFS and FM. That goes, too, for addressing my other health problems, any of which may have been originally induced by the effects of B. burgdorferi in the body, especially how if affects hormone production and cascades, autonomic nervous system, and other brain functions.

The following article isn't new, but it does highlight why people who continue to be sick with CFS and FM need to consider Lyme disease and other types of parasitic and infectious organisms as being at the root of their original health decline. If, after reading what I have written here and this article, you want to learn more, including why tests are so often negative when the person really does have the organism(s) living and reproducing inside of them, please head to my Lyme page, and read the article on Seronegativity, and more up-to-date research, testing information, and treatment protocols.

Late and Chronic Lyme Disease:
Symptom Overlap with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & Fibromyalgia

 

Children and CFS/FM

 

It's All In Your Head (IAIYH)

Cartoon caption: We've run all the tests, doc, and can't find anything wrong. It must be psychological.
We've run all the tests, doc, and can't find anything wrong. It must be psychological.

 

 

 

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