Over the past year and a half/two years, I’ve enjoyed a time of relatively good health. Especially when you compare it to the years of being predominantly housebound that happened before that. But that in no way means that I am better and no longer have ME/CFS. It is strange, but even many of my… More The More I Can Do The More Invisible My Illness Becomes
Whilst we often hear about the fact that trauma can lead to chronic illness, something that we talk about less often is the way in which having a chronic illness is a traumatic experience and can cause trauma. So, as today is World Mental Health Day, and I’ve just experienced a pretty traumatic health crash,… More 7 Things to Know About Chronic Illness and Trauma
My last blog post was now several months ago, and I was talking about how much healthier I have been. One of the questions I posed at that point was, when should I start working? Well, the cost-of-living crisis rather forced my hand and, fed up with constantly stressing about money, I took the little… More Where was I? Freelancing with a chronic illness!
One of the hardest things I found about getting sick was the feeling that I had completely lost my identity: who I was, and what made me me. In the first years of being sick I found this really difficult. Turns out, chronic illness identity, the future and dreams, are all big and complex topics… More Chronic illness identity, dreams and the future!
By summer this year the number of people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) is expected to have at least doubled since the beginning of the pandemic due to the huge numbers of people developing ME from covid. So funding and support for people with ME, and money going towards ME research is more necessary than ever. ME… More 4 Things That You Can Do for ME Awareness Month
Dear ME, Its been more or less eight years that I’ve spent with you and honestly I still don’t know how I feel about you. At all. I want to say you’ve taken my life away, made me live a half life, and doomed me to rot away in bed. But that’s really only partially… More Dear ME: a letter to my chronic illness
A couple of weeks ago, when I was still in St Helena, I climbed what I am considering a mountain. Sure we drove halfway up and walked the rest, but even so, I climbed way further than I have climbed in the last few years. Even two months ago, walking to the supermarket sent me… More My health is improving… finally!
I don’t think I ever really understood how detrimental loneliness and isolation can be, until I got ME/CFS and POTs. Being chronically ill can be an incredibly isolating and lonely experience, and it can feel as if there is nothing you can do about it; as if for as long as you are sick, you… More Chronically ill and isolated
TW: suicide, death, euthanasia Recently I found out that in the Netherlands (and actually some other countries) you can get euthanasia if you have ME. My illness. Since finding this out it has been something I have thought about a lot. There is something kind of strange about finding out that living with my illness… More Euthanasia, suicide and ME/CFS
Chronic Epstein Barr Virus, Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. What do all of these have in common? In fact, they are all names for the same illness. But why does one illness have so many different names? And why does the name of the illness matter? Well, like almost every other… More ME/CFS; a disease with many names