On the 18th November 2010, after only a two and half month wait (many sufferers go years and even decades undiagnosed) I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at the Fitzwilliam Hospital in Peterborough. The neurologist was wearing a corduroy suit – funny what you remember and what you forget. The night before I did not sleep. Not at all. I had never felt such fear and dread.
Every birthday week since has included a medical appointment of some kind. It’s becoming the most boring tradition. This is my fifth poorly-birthday-week and I’m off to see my GP tomorrow.
I recently found a diary entry from the 1st November 2010 –
“Beginning to wonder whether this is how it will be forever now.”
It isn’t. It gets better. You learn to accept it. You even embrace it. You mould your life around it. You smile in spite of it. You let it win the battles so you can ultimately win the war. You don’t fight it, you work with it.
You become a partnership: M.E. myself and I. You find joy in the simplest of pleasures. You realise you are stronger than you ever believed before. You remain the master of your fate, the captain of your soul.
While I was looking through old photos and diaries, I found this.
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This is the name tag I had to write for myself in early 2011 at my first CFS/ME session under the Lincolnshire clinic. I was too weak to get the lid off the pen. And look at me now… Still a very long way to go but it’s less distance than I had ahead of me four years ago today. What a journey M.E. myself and I are on.
M.E. myself and I 