Four years ago, I didn’t have the energy to do the most basic tasks in life. At best, I did some very light housework for an hour in the evening, and then I would collapse in bed. I spent my days sitting and napping in a chair, watching TV all day, because I didn’t have the mental energy and attention span to even read a book. Our sink has two faucet handles – one for hot, one for cold. I couldn’t remember which was which. I had to turn on both faucets and wait for the hot water to come out to figure it out. I did this for nearly two years. This was alarming to me. People would tell me a story and I couldn’t recall the details. This made me feel insensitive and self-centered, so I would concentrate very hard to try to remember what they said, but I just couldn’t. Eventually, I gave up because it took up so much energy to try to pointlessly remember. “There were days that I was so dizzy that I couldn’t walk.” At the time, I didn’t know that I had chronic fatigue. I thought I was just stressed out or worse, had dementia. Well-meaning friends told me that these were all signs of growing older, but I absolutely refused to accept that. My lifestyle as an adult had always included regular exercise and healthy eating. I knew my body and these symptoms came on too quickly and were too extreme to be age-related. I knew something was wrong, and it frightened me. My chronic fatigue slowly took over my life over a period of several years. I first started to notice a change in my body when I had to drive 40 miles to my son’s piano lessons and absolutely could not keep my head from nodding and my eyes from closing while driving because of the fatigue. I had to pull over to take a little nap. I had to add this nap to our drive time.