Hello Maddie31 and thank you for your posts on Cancer Chat.

I am sorry to hear that you have ME/CFS after having had breast cancer treatment in the past. I can appreciate you want to know more about what causes these conditions.  

Fatigue is the most common symptom associated with having cancer and cancer treatments. I think it is fair to say that most people that have undergone cancer treatment will have experienced it and for some it will be a long term. However, how fatigue affects each person is different. 

We have information about cancer related fatigue, reading this you will see that is says that 30% of people that have undergone cancer treatment will have chronic (long lasting) fatigue. You can see this information on our website here. Chemo brain or developing cognitive changes is recognised by health professionals. However, the exact understanding about why this happens is still not clearly known. Looking at how many people do develop it studies have reported a wide range of different figures, ranging from 15% to 90%. You can read more about chemo brain and the research into it on our website here.

The NHS has some good information about ME/CFS, if you have not seen it please do look at it, click here to see it. I am afraid that I cannot see any statistics that tell us how many people that have undergone cancer treatment go on and develop ME.  

I hope this information has been helpful.

Please do get back to us if you need to but It would help us answer your questions more efficiently if you could post in one area.

Take care,

Caroline