What's in a name? Is it Long Covid or Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome.

Let's start by trying to name my illness. I have ME. I use that name but others know it as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. These aren't actually illnesses as such they are a name for a list of symptoms (and so often used as a dump code diagnosis but that's a different rant).

I don't use CFS mainly because that name creates confusion with chronic fatigue which is a symptom of lots of things and only one symptom of ME. There is a long history of trying to get the name CFS dropped completely and in the UK at least its now recognised these two names are interchangeable. You may also hear Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome (also post surgery or post cancer ect) . Generally this is usually used to describe the same symptoms in the first few months after an illness and after 6 months if your not better it's CFS but some people use PVFS interchangeably with CFS/ME. We can complicate this even further by bringing in Fibromyalgia which is another list of symptoms which over laps with ME/CFS/PVFS to an extent and sometimes people use them interchangeably (but there are some distinct differences there that mean they may not be the same) . 

But now we keep hearing long covid used to describe the exact same set of symptoms. I've even heard people say they don't have CFS or PVFS they have something different then describe my exact symptoms. 

Now I get it. I can understand people don't want to use CFS and there is a lot of stigma associated with that diagnosis. But it's really not helpful to try to disassociate yourself from that instead of challenging the stigma. It just leaves people like me even more left behind and the community divided. This is a community that recognised, before the medics did, that covid was going to cause post viral fatigue on a scale we hadn't seen before and are wanting to support people who suffer PVFS after covid. 

So please before you decide you have one of these "long" illnesses go take a proper look at what Post Viral and Chronic Fatigue actually are instead dismissing them because of the stigma.