Hi Ive been looking at your profile and thought i should mention some things to you in regards of your CFS. (im posting this post here on main board instead of doing a pm to you as i thought it could possibly help another here).
Firstly with your rib pain, I think you should look up Costochondritis (also called Tietze’s syndrome) as it sounds as you may have that problem.
Secondly with your chronic sinus infection, it could be staph. There are studies that have been done in australia on nasal staph and CFS, this is very common finding in CFS (much more common than the average population). The nasal staph can give one like chronic sinus infection and some kinds of staph (not all… just some) produce toxins which in turn can make ones CFS a lot worst (or maybe even cause it for some in the first place). Their are tests too which can be done to find out if the staph you probably may have is a toxic producing one or not). I suggest you ask your doctor to do a nasal swab to check for it. My CFS specialist did a nasal swab on me and it did turn out I did have staph there so I need to take antibiotics for it soon to see if it helps my CFS at all (as it did for some in the studies) having that treated. (They tested the staph I have for what kind of antibiotics can be used to treat it…as staph is resistant to many of the antibotics…so be sure one is recieving a right one, this test probably should be done).
Ive somehow misplaced right now the page from my CFS specialist to my other doctors on this, which included online links to the actual study done and how treating the staph had helped treat CFS some too so I cant give right now the actual study links (when i find the info from my specialist… i’d post it here).
I just did a search and all i can find right now on the staph and CFS is the following http://www.masmith.inspired.net.au/aus_info/bioscreen/toxic.htm “The coagulate negative staphylococci that Newcastle University has been researching for the last number of years seem to find the human nasal passages to be an ideal location for persisting colonisation … it is of interest how commonly it is for CFS patients to give a history of chronic sinus infection, nasal congestion, or hay fever, as well as (and perhaps most importantly) secondary post-nasal drip of varying degrees. Furthermore, much more than the average severity of such symptoms is reported by approximately 90% of the patients that I have thus far interviewed. Cultures of the nose for these specific staphylococcal strains is performed easily by swabbing the nasal passages. The majority of such strains that are isolated … have turned out to be toxin-producing strains.”
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~mecfs/general/whiting.html (point two has more on the above)…
the toxins produced by staph are neurotoxins… so the stuff then ties in with Richie Shoemakers CFS treatments and how neurotoxins need to be looked for and dealt with in CFS