Anna
Part 1 of 3

I’m in a panic. In all the years I’ve taught music at the college level, I’ve always been able to pace myself through the academic year and build reserves during summer to get me through the busy fall semester. But classes start next week and I still feel like I’m in a downhill slide that began in the spring. Family pressures through the summer break sapped my energy and made it even more difficult to build the reserves I know I’ll need when students return and university politics demand more of me than I have to give.

I’ve had CFS for 11 years now. My ex-husband left me and the kids as soon as I got sick, when I wasn’t able to fulfill his expectations of dutiful wife, mother and career woman. I believe he was committed to the prosperity of a two-career marriage more than he was committed to me as a life partner. Our marriage broke up, he moved away and our two children were left in a household with a chronically ill mother. At the time, the kids were in elementary school. Now they are teens and don’t really remember a time before their mom needed to nap every afternoon and all weekend long. Too often they are left on their own to find rides to school events, friends’ homes and sports practices. I feel so limited in my ability to participate in their lives; all my energy has to go to keeping my job as a music professor and maintaining the benefits that provide us with shelter, food and health care.

So, being on the academic calendar, I budget my energy accordingly. Until this past summer, I’ve been able to store up between May and August and during holiday breaks enough to fake it through classes I’ve taught so many times I can recite them in my sleep (if only I could sleep!). But this summer, I didn’t get the break I’ve become used to. My kids are in rebellious mode and I was under a lot of stress to truly parent them, enforcing rules and curfews as each of them tried to assert their age and independence. Their high school classes start before my college teaching responsibilities, so I’ve been employing “aggressive rest therapy” while they are at school. But that’s hardly enough time to stockpile the energy reserves that will be required to maintain appearances with my students and peers once the college academic year resumes.

Hence my panic. Three years ago I turned down more administrative responsibilities that would have afforded me more responsibility, clout and pay. With the economic downturn and its impact on private universities, there’s more pressure on all faculty to sustain students majoring in music, attract new students and build a reputation for our department that admissions can sell. Long ago I gave up the extra sessions, private lessons and mentoring of maturing musical prodigies. And I hardly feel capable of doing more than showing up for class each day. I get through office hours with a “knock three times and wait” policy posted boldly on my door. It actually helps deter students from just stopping by and sapping my energy. Certainly, not something for admissions to sell.

I will close here for now. I have to find a way to muster my inner strength to meet the demands required to be breadwinner and single parent. I don’t have a choice. More to follow…

 

 

Anna is a composite character based on real patients’ stories, allowing us to describe a range of common experiences. Later parts of her story will be posted in the coming weeks. Please visit our site often for additions to this and other characters’ stories. We also regularly publish first-person accounts of living with CFS in our monthly enewsletter, CFIDSLink.