Perspectives… | celebrating multiple points of view

Ah yes, the actual application. The good news: a lot of it is already done for you. The bad news: not all of it is done for you. Your transcript, as a cumulative process, is basically finished. Your recommendations, which you should ask teachers that know you best, but not necessarily that you received the […]

Summers of lounging about and wasting time are far behind you now. Universities want to see time well spent in the summer. This could mean traveling, working, studying, volunteering, doing research- anything that can help you better understand who you are and what you want to do with your time and your life. I did […]

Three dreaded letters that do not even stand for anything. Stand for nothing you say, then why is so much emphasis placed on them? The SATs (or ACTs if you prefer) are certainly one of life’s larger enigmas, but nonetheless significant. Granted, they are becoming less and less important with some colleges not even looking […]

Although it is almost self-explanatory to say, being grade conscious is always very important. Universities are first and foremost educational institutions and they care about your abilities in the classroom. On that note, the classes that you do well in should be ones that you enjoy and that challenge you. I recognize that this is […]

College. One little word that has come to embody a whole new experience defined by independence, education, enjoyment and growth. One little word that has come to plague many high school students due to its seemingly daunting demands and application process. It seems like these days, the build up to applying to college is even […]

Children and teens with CFS have many of the same issues as other children with chronic illnesses, confounded by the fact that they have an illness which is poorly understood, often misunderstood, and too often misdiagnosed. And what do we tend to do when we don’t understand an illness? We tend to deny it, ignore […]

In this ongoing five-blog series about managing CFS in children and teens, I regret that the treatment section will be the shortest! While CFS research is being done on many fronts, much about this disease remains elusive. Even the most promising treatments have only been marginally effective for a relatively small percent of patients. The […]

As we have discussed previously, there is no diagnostic test for CFS. The diagnosis is a clinical one: the patient’s symptoms must meet the case definition criteria (See “Do I have CFS” box below) and all other medical possibilities must be ruled out. As a result, the diagnosis is often missed. Any doctor can make […]

Today I’ll discuss the symptoms of CFS and why this diagnosis is so confusing. Ironically, part of the confusion about CFS comes from its name. The focus on fatigue tends to overshadow the numerous other systemic symptoms associated with CFS. Other names include: Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or Myalgic Encephalopathy (ME; […]

Once derided as “the yuppie flu”, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is now recognized as a serious, often disabling, chronic illness which may affect anywhere from 800,000 to 2.2 million Americans. I thought I was very progressive as a physician and a women’s health advocate because I began speaking and writing about CFS more than 10 […]