Tests for CFS

I have put the list of tests that the CDC states patients with CFS should NOT have to compare with the list of tests that the Canadian Consensus Document SUGGESTS for ME/CFS patients (when appropriate) in two websites to make them both easy to download and compare side-by-side.  In the case of the CDC list, I took a paragraph and opened it up to bullet points so it would be easier for PWC/ME's to read.

The CDC list of tests NOT to give patients with CFS is here:
http://www.cfids-me.org/cdctests.html

The Canadian Consensus Document's list of tests FOR patients with ME/CFS is here:
http://www.cfids-me.org/consensustests.html

Mary Schweitzer

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Like one of my doctors who refused to do appropriate tests, it becomes apparent that the point is to NOT see any evidence that would cause them to change their minds. 

As long as the only evidence of my symptoms was my say-so, the doctor could choose to ignore them, to claim I was exaggerating.  I suggested putting me in the hospital or a nursing home overnight for observation, and he refused.  Why?  Because if a nurse's notes backed up my story, he could no longer claim that there was "no objective evidence". 

Like CDC, he didn't want to see anything wrong.  He wanted to see a depressed woman, and objective evidence of physical illness would force him to change his opinion.  He had chosen to "interpret" my report of spending a great deal of time collapsed in bed because I no longer had enough energy to sit up as "excessive sleeping", a symptom of depression.  A nurse documenting that I was lying in bed but wide awake even at 3 AM would have forced him to admit that when I said I needed a sleeping pill, I was right, and that when he said I needed an anti-depressant, he was wrong. 

Doctors don't like to admit they're wrong.  So, they make all sorts of excuses, including lists of tests that would show physical abnormalities in CFS, which they say aren't necessary to be done, in order to avoid developing the evidence that would require them to change their minds.