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In the Media - 2003

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2003
CFS, FM, & such 'In the Media, In the News'
TV, Radio, Newpapers, etc.

(Links updated 2/07)

November - December 2003

  • The Alternative Fix
    Frontline, PBS - Nov 6, 2003
    Examines the controversy over complementary and alternative medical treatments. Includes discussion and links, and the full television program is viewable online.

  • Feeling Her Pain
    By January W. Payne
    The Washington Post -  Nov 11, 2003
    She doesn't look disabled. Some doctors believe her condition isn't real. But for the author, fibromyalgia makes every day a struggle.

  • The Infinite Mind: How We Think
    Hosted by Dr. Fred Goodwin 
    National Public Radio - Nov 12, 2003
    We can learn a lot about "how we think" by studying people with brain injuries. Next, The Infinite Mind's Marit Haahr speaks with writer and poet Floyd Skloot, who has unique perspective on this. He has suffered brain damage, caused by an undetermined virus that targeted his brain, but he clearly remembers his old way of thinking. He has written a book called In the Shadow of Memory, about the damage done to his brain and the process of rebuilding his life.
    Order audio for The Infinite Mind: How We Think

  • Woman of the Year - Laura Hillenbrand

October 2003

  • ME battler in line for top accolade
    Reading Evening Post, UK - Oct 2, 2003
    Chronic fatigue syndrome sufferer Miriam Potter has been short-listed for a prestigious learning award after fighting the debilitating illness  ...

  • Handicapped not always so obvious
    Myrtle Beach Sun News, SC - Oct 3, 2003
    When Whitney Anders was a junior in high school, she was diagnosed with a painful disorder called fibromyalgia syndrome ...

  • Fibromyalgia Takes Different Tolls on Different People
    Atlanta Journal Constitution, GA - Oct 8, 2003
    Fibromyalgia patients, who suffer pain in the muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons, are not all the same and can be classified into ...

  • New Therapies For Fibromyalgia
    WFIE-TV, IN - Oct 8, 2003
    Now, newer more targeted therapies may soon be available. For more than 20 years, Elizabeth Tross-Deamer suffered the pain of Fibromyalgia. ...

  • Fibromyalgia not equal for all
    News24, South Africa - Oct 10, 2003
    Fibromyalgia patients, who suffer pain in the muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons, are not all the same and can be classified into three distinct subgroups ...

  • Health Alert: Fibromyalgia treatments
    WIS, SC - Oct 10, 2003
    Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome that affects mostly women of childbearing age. There are no specific ...

  • 'Seabiscuit' author's story worth knowing
    GoErie, PA - Oct 28, 2003
    The story of Seabiscuit is wonderfully told in Laura Hillenbrand's best seller, but for my money, the story of the author's struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome is scads more dramatic.

  • Hamburg's resilience shines on, off the field at Woodbury
    Cherry Hill Courier Post, NJ - Oct 29, 2003
    Really, it is unfathomable how Lindsey Hamburg still plays field hockey while suffering from what is believed to be fibromyalgia - a chronic condition that ...

September 2003

  • 5 women defy odds for us all
    Salt Lake Tribune, UT - Sept 1, 2003
    The YWCA is presenting Jan Tyler, a 24-year Utah educator, its award for education. ... Tyler's award isn't just for her work within organized education. The YWCA also cites Tyler for her education and support efforts involving chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, ailments she has been diagnosed with having. "Every week, I spend hours on the phone talking with people who are just trying to manage," Tyler said. "I'm just being whatever support I can be."

  • 10 Questions for Laura Hillenbrand
    New York Times, NY - Sept 3, 2003
    It has not been a good three years health wise, but I'm not sure I would say that it was too big a price to pay. The book was a blissful escape for me, giving me the chance to walk around in the lives of three fascinating, vigorous men who lived a life of motion -- a life opposite to my own. And though I have sacrificed my health for this project, in a way I feel that the book has given me a way to triumph over my disease, because I was able to achieve something in spite of it. Finally, it has given me a platform from which to be an advocate for the 800,000 people in this country who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, a greatly misunderstood and very serious disease.

  • Healthbeat: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
    Vista Magazine, USA - September 2003
    Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a debilitating and complex disorder characterized by profound fatigue that is not improved by bed rest and that may be worsened by physical or mental activity.

  • What They Were Thinking: Julianna Martin
    New York Times Magazine, NY - Sept 7, 2003
    I don't shop without my respirator on. I've got extreme hypersensitivity to everyday chemicals -- fragrance, perfume, shampoo, candles, cleaning products. It's hard to do anything. Living with multiple chemical sensitivity has changed the way I see freedom.

  • Tired of being misunderstood: Chronic fatigue sufferers hope for boost in
    disease's profile
    Boston Herald, MA - Sept 7, 2003 
    This summer the disease finally reached the public spotlight when the author of "Seabiscuit" revealed she had struggled with CFIDS for 16 years. "With the coverage of Laura Hillenbrand, it's been like night and day," said Boston author Rivka Solomon, 40. "As soon as the movie came out and she was on `20/20,' `World News Tonight' and wrote that New Yorker article, I received a number of calls from people who had this incredible level of understanding and compassion that I hadn't experienced in my 13 years with this illness."

  • Overcoming Chronic Fatigue - Full-Length Doctor's Interview
    Ivanhoe Broadcast News, FL - Sept 8, 2003
    In this full-length doctor's interview, Barry Hurwitz, Ph.D., explains how a drug typically used in cancer patients may help people with chronic fatigue syndrome.

  • Olean woman hopes to use struggle with fatigue to help others
    Olean Times Herald, NY - Sept 14, 2003
    After suffering from undiagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome for about 10 years, Wanda Cousins of Olean is slowly getting her life back. ...

  • Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?
    New York Times Magazine, NY - Sept 14, 2003
    Kabat-Zinn is conducting a study for Cigna HealthCare to see if meditation reduces the costs of treating patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia ...

  • Painful illness robs me of sleep
    Nottingham Evening Post, UK - Sept 17, 2003
    To look at Akita Farrell, you would never know she was ill. But, at the age of 30, she has an incurable disease that has robbed her of her job and her zest for life. For two years, Akita has suffered from fibromyalgia, a chronic syndrome similar to ME, which causes a head-to-toe aching and debilitating fatigue.

  • Lives interrupted
    Brandenton Herald, FL - Sept 20, 2003
    The symptoms started unexpectedly. Ken Sortore couldn't remember numbers or prices while ringing up a customer and rewrote a sales slip four times before he got it right.

August 2003

  • August Selections on the Seabiscuit Movie, Laura Hillenbrand, & CFS
  • Amy Tan, Ticked Off About Lyme
    Washington Post     - Aug 5, 2003
    The novelist, under treatment for late-stage Lyme Disease, could never have conceived how hard it would be to get a diagnosis -- or how surreal the symptoms could be.
     
  • News of treatment for fibromyalgia
    Honolulu Star-Bulletin, HI - Aug 8, 2003
    California endocrinologist R. Paul St. Amand developed a protocol using guaifenesin to treat fibromyalgia, and Kaipaka had invited him to Kauai to talk about it.

  • Against the grain: The growing awareness of celiac sprue
    American Medical News - Aug 10, 2003
    Now, Dr. Fasano co-directs the University of Maryland's Center for Celiac Research and focuses on spreading a different truth among primary care physicians. Celiac disease actually is one of the most common lifelong disorders in the United States -- American doctors just had not been trained to look for it. The wide-ranging symptoms of the disease can disguise the intestinal disorder, but new tests are helping to make diagnosis easier. The illness is triggered in genetically susceptible people by gluten-containing foods.

  • Study May Link Sinus Problems, Chronic Fatigue
    NBC4.com, DC - Aug 11, 2003
    Doctors in the D.C. area are taking part in a study that may link chronic fatigue syndrome to sinusitis. More than 800,000 people nationwide suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome. Patients usually complain of being extremely tired and achy and many suffer from headaches. However, nobody knows why. Dr. Alexander Chester, an internist with Georgetown University, is taking part in a study that looks at the association between chronic fatigue and the inflammation of the sinuses.
        >     Symptoms of Rhinosinusitis in Patients With Unexplained Chronic Fatigue or Bodily Pain - A Pilot Study - Alexander C. Chester, MD: Arch Intern Med. 2003; 163:1832-1836.
  • Wichitans helping with chronic fatigue syndrome study by the CDC
    Wichita Eagle, KS - Aug 12, 2003
    Already, the CDC team has found that chronic fatigue syndrome affects 235 of every 100,000 people in the Wichita area, that it affects more women than men, and that white women between ages 50 and 59 are the most likely to be affected. Those findings were reported in the July 14 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
        > Arch Intern Med. 2003;163:1530-1536
  • Fibromyalgia: Treatment update
    MSNBC - Aug 13, 2003
    If you are one of the 4 million Americans suffering from the chronic pain of fibromyalgia, see what researcher and WebMD message board expert Kim Jones, Ph.D., RN, FNP, had to say. She joined us to answer your questions and share the latest treatment information about this debilitating disorder.

  • Tired and Emotional
    The Observer Magazine, UK - Aug 17, 2003
    I have suffered from a dreadful fatigue for five years. Not a dozy tiredness
    which disappears after a good night's rest, but an overwhelming, debilitating
    exhaustion which fogs up my brain and totally saps my energy. And to make
    matters worse, I can't sleep. There are about a quarter of a million people in
    the UK with the same symptoms as me, but my doctors say I'm a medical mystery.

  • Solving a medical mystery: When you know something's terribly wrong ...
    Fort Wayne News Sentinel, IN - Aug 21, 2003
    According to a 1999 study, 90 percent of people with chronic fatigue syndrome - which is three times more common in women than men - are not diagnosed or receiving treatment. Even with a diagnosis, Rivers said, it was hard to get treated as "a whole person" rather than just a collection of symptoms.

  • Lyme Disease misdiagnosed, misunderstood, 'mis-insured'
    Hillsboro Argus, OR - Aug 21, 2003
    Lyme can be difficult to diagnose, with currently available lab tests not always reliable. It sometimes manifests symptoms that mimic fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis and even mental illness. This can also lead to misdiagnosis and mistreatment of other diseases being mistakenly treated as Lyme.

  • Woman finds support in fibromyalgia group
    Times Picayune, LA - Aug 23, 2003
    For Sandra Foudriat, the St. Bernard Fibromyalgia Support group has become a constant source of encouragement. "We are always saying 'Don't quit' to each other," said Foudriat, a Violet resident and a member of the board of directors. "We encourage each other to keep going."

  • Shining a light on medically unexplained symptoms
    Centre Daily Times, PA - Aug 24, 2003
    Amy, the New Jersey patient, said she was frustrated by doctors' inability to explain her sickness or offer help. It left her feeling isolated and hopeless. "It's good when they can't find anything, but you almost wish they'd find something so you could do something," she said..

  • The devaluing of a chronic illness
    Boston Globe, MA - Aug 25, 2003
    The misleading name "chronic fatigue syndrome" itself has greatly contributed to the stigma and controversy surrounding it.

  • Battling Sam keeps her dream alive
    Rochdale Observer, UK - Aug 26, 2003
    MOST children would love to go to school for just half-a-day each week. Samantha, aged 16, who suffers from ME – chronic fatigue syndrome – managed to get three A's and a C despite the debilitating illness.

  • Teen copes with chronic fatigue syndrome
    Hampshire Gazette, MA - Aug 26, 2003
    Though it most commonly strikes adults between the ages of 20 and 40, children and teenagers can also get CFS. It is also often known as CFIDS, or chronic fatigue and immune deficiency syndrome. For children and teens, the disease raises certain problems adults are spared. For openers, they may be too sick to attend school and so relationships with friends can suffer. The judgment of peers can be harsh. "She wants to be a teenager," says Bellerive's mother.

  • Medical Mysteries
    Billings Gazette, MT - Aug 26, 2003
    "People don't die of chronic fatigue syndrome," he said. "For the first year or so, you really feel like you are dying," said Lorrie Rivers of Columbia.

  • Health Alert: Procrit for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
    WIS News 10, SC - Aug 27, 2003
    Dr. Hurwitz and his colleagues are studying the drug Procrit to help patients like Toni. The drug is typically used in cancer patients, but in CFS patients Procrit raises red blood cell volume by triggering a hormone in the kidneys, "Some people have shown remarkable improvement and have gone back to work, and in others it's been less effective."

  • Ashley's long, painful journey What really bites are the words: ' ...
    Hillsboro Argus, OR - Aug 28, 2003
    This is the first of a two-part story about a local girl's harrowing journey into pain and suffering caused by an unwanted antagonist -- Lyme Disease. -- who fooled doctors for nearly 10 years.

  • Future of Fibromyalgia
    HealthCentral.com - Aug 29, 2003
    SEATTLE (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- For more than 20 years, Elizabeth Tross-Deamer suffered the pain of fibromyalgia. She started taking a new medication -- pregabalin -- and her pain subsided. "The memory is better. My relationships are better," she says. "People like me a lot more." For the first time in years, this wine author can sleep at night, giving her back energy and stamina during the day. Bernadine Smith took a different drug -- milnacipran -- and had similar results. She says: "I didn't have as much depression. I wasn't as fatigued."

  • Healthy in Houston: Lyme disease
    News 24 Houston, TX - Aug 29, 2003
    Jean Daniels has lyme disease, and now it's affecting her memory. For years, her symptoms of joint inflammation and, what she calls "brain pain", were misdiagnosed.

  • Two drugs on the way for fibromyalgia
    News 8 Austin, TX - Aug 29, 2003
    Two drugs that may relieve the symptoms of fibromyalgia are expected to enter Phase 3 clinical trials this year. Patients treated with pregabalin and milnacipran in early trials reported significant improvements in pain and fatigue.

  • Sick, disabled kids connect online
    San Jose Mercury News, CA - Aug 30, 2003
    Elle Ward, 16, missed her high school prom and instead spent the evening at home, in bed, because she suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. She wrote on an Internet message board the next day: ``I want to dance, to laugh, to sing. Proms never come around again.'' But Elle's prom did come around again -- also on the Internet -- thanks to PatchWorx, a Menlo Park-based online community for sick and disabled children.

July 2003

June 2003

  • 'Seabiscuit' Author Has a Story Of Her Own
    By William Gildea
    Washington Post, Sunday, June 22, 2003; Page E03
    Next month will bring to theaters the film based on the best-selling book "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," written by Laura Hillenbrand in a second-floor room of a rented row house in Glover Park. She wrote it despite a severe case of chronic fatigue syndrome that has plagued her for 16 years -- at times severe enough that she could not roll over in bed, leaving us to wonder how the name given the illness can be so badly understated.

May 2003

  • International Awareness Day
    Annie's Mailbox by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar
    Nationally Syndicated Column, May 12, 2003
    Studies have shown that CFS is among the most severe of all medical diseases. Aside from crippling fatigue and muscle weakness, sufferers report short-and long-term memory loss, abnormally low blood pressure and in rare cases, ataxia (impaired coordination). 

  • Fibromyalgia: Not All in Your Head
    By Anne Underwood
    Newsweek, May 19, 2003
    (for photo of original article, click here)
    Matallana, 48, of Orange, Calif., went to 37 doctors over the course of one year before she received a diagnosis of fibromyalgia—a condition involving pain throughout the body, heightened sensitivity to touch, and fatigue. And she thinks of herself as one of the lucky ones. “Patients used to go for decades without diagnosis or treatment,” says Matallana, who went on to found the National Fibromyalgia Association in 1997.

  • Chronic Fatigue Syndrome And Fibromyalgia
    News4 Your Health
    nbc4 (Washington, DC), May 15, 2003
    Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are linked by their symptoms - muscle pain and memory problems - but also by the mystery and controversy that surround them. For the more than 6 million Americans diagnosed, treatment is anything but perfect. In fact, it's often just trial and error. Now some who battle these symptoms are turning to brain surgeons.  . . .  Ellenbogen is studying the prevalence of Chiari Malformation in patients diagnosed with those conditions to help clarify who should and should not have surgery. "I've seen patients who have not only not gotten better but have gotten worse, and I'm curious as to why they were operated on in the first place," said Ellenbogen.

April 2003

  • Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in Young People and Children
    The Health Report - Radio National/ABC (Australia), April 14, 2003
    Peter Rowe, MD, Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, studied a group of young people and children who are affected by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and has come up with some fascinating findings which at the moment defy explanation. Among the topics discussed are low blood pressure, tilt table tests, joint hypermobility/flexibility, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, fibromyalgia, manual physical therapy, medications, anxiety and panic, migraines and allergies.

  • Galloping into Hearts and History
    By Kathy Blumenstock
    Washington Post, Sunday, April 20, 2003
    Writing "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" changed her life "in every way imaginable. It gave my life purpose as I struggled with a devastating illness, chronic fatigue syndrome." Hillenbrand has had CFS for 16 years. For the four years she spent on the book, she said, "I lived in the horse and the men around him. They were my escape."

  • 'Seabiscuit': Triumph of the Underhorse
    By Jennifer Frey
    Washington Post, Monday, April 21, 2003
    Laura Hillenbrand has bought the Glover Park rowhouse next door to the one where she once holed up in a tiny office, eight hours a day, writing her best-selling book "Seabiscuit: An American Legend." She gets a lot of invitations now, not that her illness -- she suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome -- allows her to accept many. And she's done maybe 250 interviews since the book came out in 2001.

March 2003

  • Tired to the Max - And Then Some
    Chronic fatigue syndrome may get new name to reflect the scope of the illness.
    By Linda Searing
    HealthScoutNews, March 16, 2003
    We all know what it's like to have a really bad case of the flu. Think, then, what it also must feel like to have severe muscle and joint pain, headaches and sore lymph nodes. On top of that, you can't concentrate, and you're tired, really tired, most of the time -- a sense of exhaustion that just won't go away, no matter how long you sleep. Some half a million Americans don't have to imagine it. They feel that way day after day, year after year.

  • In Search of a Gulf War With No Gulf War Illness
    By Gina Kolata
    The New York Times,  March 25, 2003
    Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department say they learned valuable lessons from their attempts to grapple with the mysterious illnesses - known collectively as gulf war syndrome - that plagued some veterans of the last gulf war. This time, they are coordinating their efforts in an effort to forestall another outbreak of symptoms or, if one does emerge, to understand it.

  • The pain is real, but is fibromyalgia a condition? Depends who you ask
    By KAREN UHLENHUTH
    The Kansas City Star,  Mar. 31, 2003
    Dan Clauw is a physician who does think "outside the box." A medical researcher at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, he's been studying the persistent all-over pain that is at the core of the baffling diagnosis of fibromyalgia. His conclusion: It's true what the fibromyalgia patients have been saying for years. They really do hurt all over.

February 2003

  • Fibromyalgia: The Latest News
    How to find relief from the pain that won’t go away
    By Winnie Yu
    Woman's Day, February 1, 2003
    Twenty years ago, Julie Lydon of Norwood, Massachusetts, started to experience lower back pain. Soon she couldn’t stand up straight, and her muscles stiffened when she sat for too long. Her body throbbed, and she was tired all the time. Doctors ran a battery of tests, looking for cancer, leukemia, anything. Finally, after 15 long years, Julie had a diagnosis: fibromyalgia. This chronic disorder, marked by unending pain and fatigue, affects up to 10 million Americans, the majority of whom are women. But many patients have a hard time getting diagnosed since the exact causes of fibromyalgia are unclear, there is no blood test available and symptoms can vary widely. As scientists continue to study this mysterious ailment, promising discoveries are being made to help patients with fibromyalgia better understand and manage their condition.

  • Hope for Chronic Fatigue Sufferers
    CBS News - The Saturday Early Show, February 1, 2003
    The Ampligen study should be completed in about a year and a half. Then it will have to go through the FDA’s approval process, something many CFS sufferers hope will be speedy.

  • Relief for the Mystery Pain of Fibromyalgia is in Sight
    By Linda Marsa
    The Seattle Times, February 16, 2003
    Conventional analgesics, such as Tylenol, Motrin or even morphine, provide little relief to sufferers of fibromyalgia, a mysterious and debilitating pain disorder for which there is no effective treatment. But a new drug may be able to thwart the nerve signals that scientists now believe trigger the pain. "This is a real breakthrough not only because it works, but it proves fibromyalgia can be treated," says Dr. Leslie Crofford, a rheumatologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who has studied the new drug, pregabalin.

January 2003

  • U.S. Acts to Avert Gulf War Malady [Reprinted at CPEO.org]
    By David Brown
    Washington Post, January 21, 2003; Page A01
    As it lays the groundwork for another war with Iraq, the U.S military is engaged in a massive effort to prevent the reappearance of Gulf War syndrome. Over the decade that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict, the chronic illnesses that tens of thousands of veterans described ultimately marred the U.S. victory. The agonizing investigation of what came to be known as Gulf War syndrome eroded trust in the military, cost hundreds of millions of dollars and consumed thousands of years of human labor.
     

  • Is A Fragrance Free Workplace Right for You?
    KATU TV, January 30, 2003
    Many people have had a co-worker at one point that wore so much cologne or perfume that it was practically unbearable. The solution may be right around the corner: a fragrance free workplace. The fragrance free policy is cropping up in public buildings and in the next few years it may start hitting the private sector.

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Updated February 22, 2007
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