The flip-side to almost any chronic illness is chronic fatigue. It's a symptom of your body being run down all the time, or of fighting through pain or other dysfunction to function at all, or both. The WebMD Symptom Checker lists 20 diseases with the general symptom "fatigue" (with "none of the above" for "made worse by..." and without degree of severity specified), from sinusitis to MS. Of course, FMS is on the list.
Interestingly, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/CFIDS/ME is not on the list. It is a well-known disorder to FMS patients. CFS patients have fatigue with pain, while FMS patients have pain with fatigue, but many believe that they are essentially the same disorder, or are points on a pain/fatigue continuum that describes the spectrum disorder encompassing both.
Even to many of us who are in pain full-time, the fatigue is the worst of this life. It seems to lead to total mental breakdown. Thought processes and emotional controls both weaken, making every aspect of life more difficult.
All this, of course, is a roundabout way of saying that I'm utterly drained and fatigue has gotten the better of me.
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