After 10 years pushing through with post viral fatigue, I went to bed with a runny nose and just didn’t wake up. I slept for weeks and eventually woke up to realise I was bedridden, unable to move, except to crawl to the toilet.
Life was great! I was super active: working out three times a week, fishing and hiking with my husband and dogs, camping and traveling on the weekends. My stained-glass business was going strong and my newest passion for teaching meditation was flourishing: I had just taught a meditation class for Microsoft.
Then, WHAM!
I am an English medical doctor and professor of epidemiology. I became known in media across the world as one of the first people who told their stories of long covid. I went on a roller coaster of symptoms and uncertainty for several months until I learnt some life-changing lessons that helped me recover. I want to share them.
I am writing this to those of you who are ill and have lost hope that you will get well again. I write because I want the health services to be more knowledgeable in the way they meet us. It was tough having to go through this on my own, and I would have wished there had been a team of psychologists, physiotherapists, and doctors who would not focus on my symptoms but on my rehabilitation, but first and foremost that could have provided a fair explanation of what might have happened. This is an essential key for people to get the courage to rehabilitate.
I got sick in March 2020. I was exhausted and couldn’t do anything but lie down. I went to see the doctor because it didn’t feel like normal fatigue. Blood was drawn, but the tests came back normal.
By offloading my thoughts and emotions I learnt so much about myself and the resentment, anger, sadness and frustration that I had been holding inside my body for so long that originated from two major challenges that I had in my life.
It had been a horrible night suffering through the worst migraine of my life. My migraines had been out of control, but like many medical professionals, I minimized my symptoms and pushed on through so that I could take care of other people.
In this episode of her very inspiring Youtube and podcast series The Puzzle of Healing, Sophie Helbig interviews May Elin Game and Torill Sorkmo about their recovery from ME/CFS and Recovery Norway.
It is January 2015. The youngest boy in the family is 12 years old. Following a slightly unsettled period after the children and I moved from Oslo to Mo i Rana, our son has settled down and made new friends that he likes.
My name is Michael and I am now 47 years old. A few years ago I was severely ill primarily due to back pains.
Prior to getting sick, I worked for housing trust supporting men with mental health problems. It was a really interesting job and I enjoyed working with the residents.
We all expect to get well when we first become sick, but as more and more questions are left unanswered, as weeks of illness turn into months and as months turn into years, it’s quite normal to lose hope that you will get your life back.
That’s what it was like for me.
I got ill in 2008 and got the ME diagnosis in 2009. At the time, I was 39 years old, divorced, had two children and was working full time. I lived an active life before this. I sat on boards, was parental contact, trained at both the fitness center and with active cycling.
I got sick in the summer of 2014. I was healthy and in great physical shape, and then suddenly I was just lying there. My body had collapsed. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what was going on.
This is my story about how I got ME/CFS and how I managed to recover from it.
It was December 2000, near the end of a two-week Christmas break that my illness began. It started off with typical flu-like symptoms – sneezing and runny nose, with the fever symptoms of feeling cold and aches and pains all over my body.
When I was seventeen, I contracted mononucleosis and was really ill for months. As soon as I recovered, I went back to school full time. Being a trainee hairdresser, I would spend a lot of time on my feet, with my hands held high. It did not take long before I developed tendinitis in both arms, and my general health deteriorated, from hardly ever being unwell prior to the mononucleosis (common cold, gastroenteritis, tonsillitis), to being ill often.