The Story Behind this Page

Hi. My name is Jordan, and I’m a 37 year old American man with an ongoing condition known as CFS, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

(Please note that clicking underlined words below open a descriptive tooltip you can close by clicking again)

Even though I avoid using the word “chronic” (it’s discouraging) the term CFS/ME comes closest to describing my symptoms, and is a rallying point for some amount of targeted research and innovation. My condition is unique, like many sufferers report. While it comes with plenty of fatigue, it’s an entire bundle of symptoms including brain fog, insomnia , anhedonia/depression and generalized anxiety.

The trouble is that CFS is a shorthand descriptor for a set of symptoms, all of which which can have a wide range of causes. There are at least 10 theories for what could cause it, and nothing I have discovered so far has narrowed it down far enough.

I named this site “Operation Fog Free”, not because the fog is the only symptom I care about. But if only one symptom could vanish in a puff of smoke, I would nominate that one, at his has been the most destructive to my ability to function. Even simple life planning is very hard without clarity, and being in public highlights a strange feeling of depersonalization where I feel disconnected like I’m in a boring dream. Spooky stuff, and unlike anxiety, there is nothing I’ve found to even provide temporary relief from it.

But fatigue, insomnia, anhedonia/depression and anxiety don’t lag too far behind in severity. I would gladly accept relief from any of them

I’m creating this living document not for sympathy but in hopes somebody reading this can help either directly or indirectly.

Are these all “new”? Not exactly. My health journals have shown me some of these symptoms have existed for me in varying degrees, sometimes with different names over the last 10 years. They made life difficult, but I was still able to function professionally and personally through it all, while still wiping out occasionally.

This changed in March of 2020, after getting COVID. Easy things became hard, hard things became almost impossible. Symptoms became less intermittent than they were in the past. After losing my job in October, I realized this could not go on this way and I decided to make health a priority.

I spent most of 2021 consulting with various integrative health and functional medicine docs, as my allopathic doctors could not find anything beyond D and B12 deficiencies.

I tried several supplement regimens, and took alot of recommended standard and nonstandard tests and bloodwork. There were some promising findings, but sadly none of the regimens to address them worked.

The paradox of brain fog is- to stay proactive in addressing it takes cognitive power you don’t have, kind of the way it takes vision to look for your eyeglasses. I feel I’m running out of steam, so every bit of help and encouragement is welcome, and I’m willing to try anything with any logic behind it.

If you have ever suffered from an illness with an unknown cause or treatment, you might know how isolating it is. It’s an extremely unfair fight, akin to swinging at a ghost

At this point, my hope is entirely manufactured, when I even have the ability to do so. But I feel there are many things I’ve yet to try, and I’m optimistic when I solve one of these things, I’m likely to see improvement or resolution in multiple symptoms.

What I would like the most is to find a practitioner who has who has helped enough people solve CFS and/or brain fog to call it a specialty. This would help me to outsource some of my missing brainpower, and keep moving forward.

If you know a practitioner with a great record for helping people like me, or are that person, please reach out here. In the interest of being concise, I highlighted certain terms where you can read details using tooltips, and also created a separate FAQ page for some common questions practitioners have asked.

However, I’m receptive to advice from anyone. If you are just a civilian who notices something I may have missed, I would still appreciate the advice. Drop a comment in the Suggestion Box. 

On most medical internet forums, people appear to ask questions in a period of struggle, vanish either when they stop fighting, or when they get better. So you’re left reading about the acute period of action and struggle, and not the happy ending, if there is one. It doesn’t make for a very inspiring ratio.

So when I overcome this, the website will remain a monument to my struggle and victory even after I achieve it. Getting better is just the beginning of my responsibility. I will have a great karmic debt to lift others in the same predicament. Maybe it will define a future life path, maybe not, but at a minimum, I plan to help others find hope and relief from similar in some form for the remainder of my life.

Thank you for reading. Whether or not you are able to help, I appreciate it.