On a personal note; Looking at the state of our world today, I think there hasn't, in my lifetime, been a more pressing need for M.E patients to get rid of their illness.
It is just so unbelievably easy to hurt an M.E patient:
Make them exercise when they should rest and make them rest when they should exercise.
It is ridiculously simple to be cruel:
You just tell them that you don't believe that they are ill. That they are lazy. That they are liars. That they are non-compliant. That the years of miserable lonely suffering were ...nothing.
And it is trivial to destroy an M.E patient's life:
You just take away their food via their welfare or their insurance.
M.E patients report symptom worsening after treatments that on the face of it appear to be absolutely safe. This then is a perfect place to hide terrible abuses. M.E patients are weak and are weakened by justifiable treatment.
Worse still:
M.E patients are isolated, they are poorly represented by charities and advocates, and they have lost the strength and the safety that their former social positions may have afforded them.
To some; M.E patients appear to occupy one of the lowest and most unenviable positions in society:
They are the undeserving sick. They are the hopeless, unsavable, dead set.
As a storm of cruelty and dishonour sweeps across our societies, M.E patients NEED TO GET WELL AS FAST AS THEY CAN.
As an ex-M.E patient I know how to fake it - being well - that is. I know how to slap on tan, put a smile in my face and painkillers in my belly. But I also know that such actions are of limited use. It is hard to keep up the façade for long.
You see; The trouble is... M.E is real. It always was a real condition. Patients weren't lying. They really cannot see a way to extract themselves from the terrible cycle of illness following exertion that, from the patient perspective, defines the condition.
One may fake being well long enough for the job interview, but one can't fake being well for long enough to hold down the job.
Nothing less than a genuine treatment will be enough to help M.E patients to weather what's coming. Maybe I have something that will help, maybe I do not. It doesn't matter, just so long as you, person with M.E, go out and find something that works for you. Do not waste this precious time preparing and consuming bile-flavoured popcorn. Instead...
Make haste.
