During my 17-year struggle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), I’ve often felt as U.S. women’s soccer player Michelle Akers says in this movie — that she died on the day she got sick.
This is a superb documentary on CFS.
From IMDB.com: “In 1984-85, people at Lake Tahoe fell ill with flu symptoms, but they didn’t get better. Medical literature documents similar outbreaks: in 1934 at LA county hospital, in 1948-49 in Iceland, in 1956 in Punta Gorda, Florida. The malady now has a name, chronic fatigue syndrome, and filmmaker Kim Snyder, who suffered from the disease for several years, tells her story and talks to victims and their families, and to physicians and researchers: is it viral, it is psychosomatic, is it one disease or several (a syndrome) ; what’s the CDC doing about it; what’s it like to have a disease that’s not yet understood? Her inquiry takes her to Punta Gorda and to a high-school graduation.”
Roger Ebert writes in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Snyder is an investigative journalist who does her own detective work…a documentary which does what the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta shamefully failed to do: connect the dots.”
I wonder what happened to high school senior Stephen Paganetti, who was too sick to even feed himself. Few of his friends visited him once he got sick. (His mailing address is POBox 145 Durham, CT 06422-0145.)
Most of my friends my age ignored me once I got sick, or said that it was all in my head.
One of my strongest beliefs from my illness is that older people are more compassionate with illness than younger people. They are more likely to visit you and to help you.
