'M.E. myself and I' by Anna Redshaw

I think we’re exceptional when it comes to adapting and moulding some kind of life around the restrictions our illhealth places upon us. I really do.

Take reading. So many of us are now unable to read, or unable to read without it exacerbating certain symptoms.

So we limit ourselves to a paragraph at a time. We use audiobooks. We have loved ones read aloud to us. We use ebooks instead because they’re much easier to hold and use. We choose books with collections of short passages or poems. We try to keep our brains ticking over by reading short captions on social media instead of whole books.

It’s not how we want it to be. We’d love nothing more than to escape inside a good book. But we do our best to let go of what was and move on to finding a way to make things work for us.

For me though, audiobooks are impossible. Processing sound is harder than deciphering written word. (So please caption your videos.) But at the moment reading books is not possible either. So when adapting things to fit me better STILL doesn’t make something possible, it’s my patience that I’m proudest of.