Susan Kreutzer, 58, pictured in her home Oct. 25, 2014 in Danville, Calif. Kreutzer says she feels like her life has been stolen from her since she came down with what she thought was the flu in 1991. A young lawyer at the time, she toughed it out for months, but she never seemed to recover. Over the past few years, she has oscillated between really sick and somewhat sick but always exhausted. She's seen doctors and specialists over the years, mostly concerning her thyroid, which she had removed once it was discovered it had cancer in 2006. Kreutzer never fully recovered and in fact got worse in 2008. That was the first time she started timidly asking about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, knowing the term had a stigma attached to it. Doctors told her not to go there, but she was desperate for answers, &quot;my life is ending,&quot; she thought. Finally, in 2012, she found a doctor who was willing to give her antiviral drugs associated with the mysterious illness. At the time, she was only awake about three hours of the day and the sleep she did get was restless. &quot;There's fatigue, but this is not regular fatigue,&quot; she said, &quot;this is beyond any kind of fatigue you've ever experienced.&quot; 10 weeks to the day of starting the antivirals, she says she &quot;rose from the dead&quot;. For the first time in years, she was starting to feel good again. But in Kreutzer's excitement in feeling better, she wore her body out quickly and fell ill again. She's now in a stable enough place that she plans to start taking the antiviral drugs again and is hoping for &quot;remission&quot; from the illness she prefers to call Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Photo: Leah Millis / The Chronicle / ONLINE_YES