I guess my health problems started from the day I was born. I heard the story from my Mum. I was born with blocked tear ducts. Not exactly a health problem, but then one of the nurses gave me her cold. And then… yes, there is more… the nurses forgot to give me the feed I was supposed to have, so I lost weight. I went from being over seven pounds in weight to being under seven pounds. I was a day old. My Mum then demanded an ambulance to take me home. So not the best start in life.
School
But I never did have great health growing up. I never had the energy of other children. They would be running around the playground like they ran on Duracell batteries, and I would be exhausted from trying to keep up. PE was torture for me since I knew that I would not have any opportunity to conserve energy for the rest of the day. It was the same all through my life at school.
I missed a lot of schooling — about two-thirds. It was agony trying to catch up on school work, and that would lead to more time off due to exhaustion. Although the teachers showed concern about this, they didn’t offer any suggestions for helping me, they just said,
‘she needs to be at school more.’
Rather useless really.
No matter how many times my parents explained to them that my health made it all so hard for me, there seemed to be scepticism from the school about whether I really was as poorly as I was making out. Kids were lumped together back in those days, and if you didn’t fit in, you were a problem.
I wasn’t a troublemaker, and the school admitted that I was intelligent (to which my parents said, ‘yes, we know’). But it did feel as though they just wanted me off their hands, that I was the one holding them back from teaching me. Anyway, they sent me to a ‘special school’ where I finished my formal education aged 16.
Work
Work wasn’t too bad. At least I could have some control over what I did. I did part-time work at first as a checkout at a supermarket. That job lasted about five years. Then I moved on to another dead-end job, then another. The jackpot came when I managed to find an office job. It was minimum wage and learning on the job. It suited me well, and in my time there, I became a project manager and a PA. I surprised myself with how well I coped with it — although I tended to crash on the weekends.
It was then, in late 2010, that I started getting energy problems. When I returned home from work and relaxed in the evening, I would have trouble getting myself out of an armchair. (Just to clarify, I was 36 years old by this time.)
Then I was also having problems getting to work, as it felt like I could carry on sleeping for another few days. I couldn’t understand where all the tiredness had come from. I made the excuse of ‘it’s just a virus’, but in my heart, I knew that no virus I ever had lasted as long as this or rendered me so incapable of waking up properly.
I kept on going, eventually convincing my employer to let me work from home. But that didn’t work out, as my health (both mental and physical) collapsed. I didn’t want to answer the phone or open the front door. I was in a mess and couldn’t think. I was severely depressed, my body hurt, and crying was a regular occurrence.
The Diagnosis
In the end, I had to admit that I might just have ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). Others in my immediate family have had or still have ME, so I understood more or less what the symptoms were.
In 2012 I was formally diagnosed with ME and Fibromyalgia (the latter explained the pain in my body). It was clear that I could no longer work, so my employer let me go, and I started claiming benefits (government financial assistance). That was awful. I had worked since the age of 16, and I was used to looking after myself financially. Living on handouts added to my depression.
It took a long time to come to terms with life as it is. Not just that, but it may well be that I’m like this for the rest of my life. I have many symptoms of ME, and there are a lot. But one thing that keeps me going is that although my body may be a bit duff, I will fight for my brain. Learning is something that I strive to do every day (if possible), and I feel that brain exercise, in whatever form, helps me from getting too depressed.
So, here I am now writing about it. This is a kind of therapy for me.
If you would like to know more about ME and Fibromyalgia, then the following links can help you. (Links not affiliated).
This article was originally published on Medium.
Charlotte Clark 