CFS On the Golden Girls

Yesterday I was having what I call a “CFS Day” and I was lounging around watching television in the morning.  On Lifetime yesterday morning, the two-part episode of Dorothy finding out she had CFS was on.  I thought to myself how ironic that was to be on when I was experiencing a CFS flare.

I have seen these episodes before but for some reason how Dorothy was treated by the different doctors she went to see really struck a nerve with me this time.  As Dorothy traveled from doctor to doctor to find out what was wrong with her, she continually was dismissed, ignored and made to feel as though she needed a psychiatrist instead of a physician.  How many of us have experienced the exact same thing?  She was told that she was depressed, lonely, needed to change her haircolor and she was feeling tired because she wasn’t a “spring chicken” any longer.

I remember leaving many doctors’ offices crying, feeling alone and as if I would never find someone to believe me.  On the show Dorothy started to doubt that she was sick a couple of times but because she was a strong woman she knew deep down that she was really ill.  She talked about some of the symptoms she experienced such as being too exhausted to talk, too exhausted to get out of bed and too exhausted to raise her hands to wash her hair.  It was also mentioned at the end of the second episode that the name of the illness doesn’t fit the disease – even back in 1990 when this show (“Sick & Tired”) originally aired they were talking about how ill fitting the name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is.

This two-part episode came about because the co-creator of Golden Girls, Susan Harris, suffered from CFS and she wrote the episodes to give viewers an idea what the illness was all about. 

Watching the “Sick & Tired” episodes brought back many of the emotions I originally felt when first diagnosed with ME/CFS.