One Son Recovered?

Things have been crazy around here, with a visit to help my father-in-law sort through his house to get ready to move here and my dad having a 7-hour surgery yesterday as a first step to treating stage 3 melanoma. So, I am pretty exhausted and experiencing lots of stress.

But among all the bad stuff, we've had some good news, too. My 16-year old son has weaned himself off his Florinef (medication for Orthostatic Intolerance - OI) for the first time in 8 years, with no apparent ill effects! We tried the same thing last summer, but his symptoms flared up. So, after 8 years, he is now taking no Florinef, potassium, or salt tablets...and so far, he seems to be doing well. He's been very active - playing soccer, golf, biking, etc. in the summer heat, plus going to PT several times a week - and he's been feeling great.

His CFS has always been mild, and he fits the profile for those with the best chance of recovery (childhood onset, mild symptoms, up and down pattern, abrupt onset).

His symptoms began at age 6 (1st grade), at the same time as his older brother who was 10. Our younger son's symptoms were different, though, than mine or his brother's. His main symptoms were pain-related: chest pain, back pain, headaches, plus in his 6-year old words, "just feeling bad all over." He showed the classic post-exertional crashes and crashes when exposed to a virus but in between those bad periods, he felt fine. We talked privately to his pediatrician about our suspicions (by then his older brother and I were both diagnosed with CFS) but held off on officially diagnosing him - he was so little and still functioning well much of the time that we didn't want to saddle him with the label of being sick.

By spring of 3rd grade, he had missed over 35 days of school, and the principal called us to find out what was going on - at that point, his pediatrician ran all the necessary exclusion tests and officially diagnosed him with CFS. I had discussed his symptoms with Dr. David Bell (pediatric CFS expert, now retired) and Dr. Peter Rowe, pediatric CFS and OI expert at Johns Hopkins. They both thought that most of his symptoms were OI-related and would improve with treatment, so we started him on Florinef (our pediatrician worked with Dr. Rowe by phone, something he is still happy to do to help educate other doctors about CFS and OI in kids) which had helped out older son considerably.

The Florinef worked wonderfully - it cleared up all of his pain symptoms and greatly reduced the post-exertional crashes. On Florinef, he was symptom-free about 95% of the time and could do just about anything he wanted. He would still crash occasionally if he really overdid (we had an "only 1 sleepover in a row" rule!) and a cold might knock him out for a week or so, but otherwise, he has lived a fairly normal life from starting Florinef at the end of 3rd grade through the present.

He typically missed between 12 - 15 days of school each year for those occasional crashes but felt perfectly well the rest of the time. He's been playing soccer since he was 4 years old and has been on his school soccer team since starting high school, as well as a travel team this past year. He has had some injuries that sidelined him (he's hypermobile and prone to soft tissue injuries), but CFS/OI had little to no effect on his athletic life.

This past year, he missed only 3 days of school the entire year! That's a pretty amazing record for our household. And that included time out after a knee surgery. So, when he wanted to try going off Florinef again, we gave him the OK. He tapered off, as you're supposed to, and has now been completely off it for several weeks and is doing very well.

So, is he completely recovered? I don't think that's ever an easy question. He's definitely got Joint Hypermobility Syndrome, and he thinks he still has some mild OI symptoms. He says he sometimes gets dizzy if he stands up too fast or doesn't stay hydrated. But otherwise, he seems quite well. The real test will be starting school in the fall - going to school full-time and playing soccer two hours a day - but so far, so good!

That's your dose of hope for today - some people DO recover and it is possible.