How do you rate fatigue, or the myriad other symptoms that come with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS or ME/CFS)? How do you rate your overall functionality (or lack thereof) in a way that doctors can understand with just a glance at your chart?
When it comes to other major health issues, we have scales. Any oncologist can look at any cancer patient’s chart and see exactly what disease stage they’re in. As flawed as the standard pain scale may be, at least it’s something. Yet with millions of people’s lives derailed by chronic, debilitating symptoms we have no universally recognized way to describe where an ME/CFS patient “is” in terms of disease severity or recovery.
How do you rate fatigue, or the myriad other symptoms that come with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS or ME/CFS)? How do you rate your overall functionality (or lack thereof) in a way that doctors can understand with just a glance at your chart?
When it comes to other major health issues, we have scales. Any oncologist can look at any cancer patient’s chart and see exactly what disease stage they’re in. As flawed as the standard pain scale may be, at least it’s something. Yet with millions of people’s lives derailed by chronic, debilitating symptoms we have no universally recognized way to describe where an ME/CFS patient “is” in terms of disease severity or recovery.
http://chronicfatigue.about.com