My girlfriend Sarah, whom I love so very much, has ME which is why I’m trying to raise as much money as possible for the ME Association and I wanted to write a few words about her illness as I see it through my eyes.
There are many common misconceptions about ME, the first being that it is not real and although the term ‘Yuppie Flu’ is not heard very often these days that probably owes more to the falling out of use of the term ‘Yuppie’ rather than a sea change in the perception of ME. Even though there is a diagnostic test for ME some people, including members of the medical profession, believe that it is somehow not a real illness and is all in the head of the sufferer. The second common misconception that I have heard on a number of occasions is that ME is the same as MS (Multiple Sclerosis) which of course it is not. The misconception that I find the most painful to hear from those with no experience of the condition is that the sufferer is just a bit tired and is making a great drama out of it.
The ME Association website (http://www.meassociation.org.uk/) contains a great deal more information than I am going to give you as this is a personal account and I must say that I can only really comment on how ME affects Sarah and even then I can only recount what she says to me and how I see it affecting her.
Sarah’s daily symptoms can include, and this is not an exhaustive list, some or all of the following: exhaustion, almost constant muscle pain, regular nausea, very powerful headaches, dizziness, diarrhoea, aching joints, itchy skin, earache, an inability to regulate body temperature resulting in running a fever whilst having freezing cold extremities and there are no doubt others that I have forgotten. Add to this the fact that they can all be exacerbated by periods of high stress or worry and it’s amazing that she manages to function at all. Yet function she does and more than that she works harder than anyone else I know, she gives of herself constantly and fights daily against the pain refusing to let it beat her. She doesn’t always win. She describes the need to sleep as akin to a deep ache rather than a feeling of tiredness, like it is actually painful to be awake.
I would like you to remember your worst ever hangover, remember how sick you felt, how much your body hurt and how you lay in bed wanting to die. Now imagine feeling like that a lot of the time and having no choice but to go into work and do a stressful and demanding job for ten hours, a job where she must remember large amounts of information and juggle many people and tasks at once. Of course some days are better than others but more often than not a number of the symptoms are attacking at the same time. I don’t know how she does it, she is the strongest person I know and not only that but she is always thinking of others and putting them before herself. She does things with me even though she knows that it will cause her more pain and she will feel worse later on than if she doesn’t. She does this because she loves me and because of her refusal to let it beat her.
It upsets me that I am powerless to do anything to make it better, I can’t take the pain away, I can’t make her well.
So that it why I am running this marathon, that is what motivates me to get out and run on those days when I really don’t want to, when it’s raining and windy and horrible. I hope that I will be able to hit my target of £500, all I need to do is find 20 people to give me £5. That’s not much is it?
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