For a couple of years now my wife has been complaining that she suffers from something known to newspaper features writers as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). (A well-known law of journalism states that if it has an acronym, it's real.) The symptoms of CFS are, well, chronic fatigue. Some non-features writers suspect there is no such syndrome, referring to it by the derisive nickname "yuppie flu," on the theory, I suppose, that yuppies are too glib to catch anything serious.

My wife, who is not a yuppie I assure you, has a very nice black doctor named Dr. Greene. My wife, no doubt owing to her chronic fatigue, sometimes slips a cog somewhere and calls him Dr. Brown (old W.A. Spooner would understand I'm sure). She also calls our next door neighbor Mrs. Hudson, despite the fact that her name is Mrs. Hunter. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is hell, let me tell you.

When my wife announced her diagnosis to Dr. Greene, he turned and beat his head against the wall in mock consternation: "Oh No! Now she has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome! Listen to me, there's no such thing as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome!" Well, that was two years ago. This week no less a medical authority than the New York Times announced a discovery linking an identifiable virus to CFS. My wife feels vindicated at last. Now if Mrs. Hunter would just change her name . . .

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is bad enough. But in the summer of 1989 the State of Massachusetts decided to stop paying welfare benefits to illegal aliens. This led the Director of the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Coalition to tell the Boston Herald "This represents compassion fatigue at the highest level."

I thought this contagion of fatigues had run its course, but following the elections of 1990 the problem surfaced in the nation's capitol. Upon leaving office after more than a decade as Washington D.C.'s mayor, Marion Barry left a legacy of scandal and a $300 million budget deficit. The new mayor, upon surveying the shambles, ordered immediate budget cuts; which caused concerned civic leaders to complain that "compassion fatigue" was roaming loose on the boulevards of the District of Columbia. Evidently, the disease had spread down the Eastern Seaboard all the way to the nation's capitol in a little more than a year.

I think I had better alert Dr. Greene.