I rarely got sick until I got pneumonia in 2018…

Back in 2018, I got a nasty dose of pneumonia, leading to a golf-ball-sized pulmonary abscess that saw me admitted to hospital. For about 24 hours, they thought it was something much worse, and I’ll tell that crazy story another time, but after recovering from the pneumonia and abscess, I developed a range of weird fatigue-based symptoms that wouldn’t go away. These were eventually diagnosed by three doctors to be chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), and as I write this FAQ, some seven years later in 2025, I’m still dealing with it.

This symptom sequence is not uncommon, but I had no idea I’d still be dealing with it many years later. CFS is a real doozy, and I can’t overstate the tedium of the symptoms, their constant recurrence, and of constantly needing to explain them, which in itself adds to the symptoms.

I can feel good for months, and then just slightly overdo it physically or even mentally, like complex fault-finding or doing my taxes, and be wiped out by fatigue, stomach problems, phantom smells, and body-wide aches and pains for weeks. At their worst, these flare-ups literally prevent me from doing any useful work.

For those who might think, “Mike, I get tired too, what’s the big deal”, as a long-distance runner, marathon and many times half-marathon completer until wear and tear put a stop to that, I know a thing or two about effort and feeling tired. To understand CFS, take normal tiredness on your worst day, add a hangover and arthritic pain and then multiply that by 10. Then have that go on for a month or more.