A Vexing Enigma
New insights confront chronic fatigue syndrome
By Ben Harder
Laurel Wright was 52 years old when her well-being plummeted. That May, she began to feel inexplicably tired, day after day. “By September,” she says, “I crashed and burned.” She developed debilitating exhaustion, severe insomnia, muscle aches, and what she calls “brain fog.” Whenever she overexerted herself, aches and pains would spread throughout her body, sending her to the bed or the couch for several days at a stretch. Wright tried ducking out from her job during the day to go home and nap. Later, she cut her hours to halftime, and then went on sick leave. That was 12 years ago. She never returned to work.
Early in Wright’s illness, a doctor determined that she had developed chronic fatigue syndrome. Wright now obtains treatment for it near her home in Salt Lake City. The condition is a poorly understood disorder that affects more than 1 million people in the United States, according to a new estimate that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to publish this fall.