Symptoms Update. How I'm affected.

One of the things that sucks about ME is it's massive variety and spontaneity of symptoms. They come and go, ranging from everything from a common cold to a fever. It makes it hard to know what the line is between actual ill virus symptoms and symptoms from an ME crash.

When I was was really badly affected by my ME around February through to April this year my symptoms included the inability to control my body temperature, uncontrollable shaking, vision problems and heart palpitations as well as the usual fatigue. Probably the worst symptom around this time was my muscle problems; on many days I found it a struggle to walk any distance at all, I couldn't get up the stairs without help and I couldn't get in to school.

Luckily while most of those symptoms have subsided, I've picked up quite a few more and I don't think the range of symptoms will ever stop surprising me. At the moment, problems I have to deal with (not always on a day to day basis THANK GOD, but at least a third of the time) include:

• Pain (not always muscle specific) just general dull pains down my arms and the back of my legs.
• Swollen glands, this has been going since I had glandular fever in year 11, though now sometimes I wake up looking like the Elephant Man.
• Caffeine and alcohol intolerance - I may have had this for a while, but hadn't noticed. I am now  a real real lightweight and any caffeine gives me the shakes. 
• Eczema- I get it on my face, arms and back when I'm run down. I never used to have this and it's horrible and itchy. Hydrocortisone cream doesn't seem to be doing much, one patch will go and another will pop up somewhere else. 
• Weak joints - I'm hyper mobile, always have been bit over the past few months I've noticed how weak my joints are getting, I feel like my limbs partially dislocate a lot of the time and I'm left with wobbly and painful joints, especially my hips and knees. 
• Stress pain. I find that whenever get stressed, instantly I get pain down my arms. It's horrible, but I'm learning to  control my emotions in order to control my pain.
• Anaemia. I go through phases of being anaemic as my body isn't very good at absorbing the nutrients it needs. I take Iron tablets daily and at my worst I take up them up to 3 times a day. I'll do a post about a good diet for battling Anaemia at a later date.
• Disturbed sleep. My sleep for about 6 months now hasn't been great, but it's got to the point now where I am getting frequent nightmares and feel as if I'm awake at night for hours. The doctor's tried me on medication which I will talk about later, but it just makes me feel like a zombie. 
• Weak hair and nails- my hair isn't that bad at the moment, but my nails will not get any stronger, they're all flaky and soft and I need to find a treatment to help them. 

That's all I can think of at the moment apart from my general fatigue, which I still have most days.  I could sleep for hours during the day and it takes a lot to get me motivated, I just hope that each next week brings more ups than downs.