Documentary movingly examines chronic fatigue syndrome

Lake Tahoe, Nev., suffered an outbreak, or so it seemed.

The next appeared to be in Londonville in upstate New York.

"What is this thing, and how did I get it?" one patient asks in "I Remember Me," a well-titled 74-minute documentary by Kim A. Snyder, a patient who made the picture when she had recovered enough from the mysterious ailment, after nearly a year in bed, to function.

So what is it• The U.S. government in 1988 named it chronic fatigue syndrome, but Olympic soccer gold medalist Michelle Akers, who suffers from the debilitating ailment, objects to the label, saying it deprives sufferers of credibility by naming it for a symptom.

Akers is one of many patients, family members and medics Snyder interviewed for "I Remember Me," which, through its title, reflects the way patients pine for the energy and normalcy of life they once enjoyed.

Chronic fatigue syndrome might date to at least 1934, but like Legionnaire's disease and AIDS, it did not assume an identity until the 1980s, when its relatively sudden prevalence demanded attention within the medical community.

Patients described symptoms such as fever and swollen glands that could be ascribed to known ailments, such as influenza or pneumonia, but with such additional properties as partial paralysis and disorientation.

But the symptoms persisted for months and sometimes years. Often they were treated with antibiotics and prescriptions for sleep or pain. But they persisted.

Doctors disagreed. Prognoses varied. One calls it "a way of expressing a sense of ill-being that has been medicalized ... into a proposal for a new disease."

Another says it's "a viral infection driving the immune system."

There's no single diagnostic test for it. Patients might be no better after years of treatment.Film director Blake Edwards, whose movies include "Days of Wine and Roses," "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and the Pink Panther series, says he thought it was just a terrible flu at first. But like other chronic fatigue sufferers, he couldn't shake it.

The most compelling patient, though, is Steven Paganetti, who had been confined to his bed for two years at the time the movie was made. In a rare foray out into the world, he's taken by ambulance and gurney to his high school graduation.

Former classmates greet him. Through their exuberance, we see, as he sees, how much he already has lost.