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 briefly admitted to hospital. For about 24 hours, they thought it was something much worse, a crazy story for another time. Luckily, it wasn’t, but after recovering from the pneumonia and abscess, I developed a range of new 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.