I played trumpet, sang choir, captained the hockey team, sailed and climbed mountains. I traveled the world, sometimes with young children, and I achieved degrees and was busy and always managed to keep going, no matter what. And that was the problem. Because I kept feeling more and more like I was wading through treacle and then I would start to feel like I was blacking out\u2014so bad was the intolerable exhaustion that would make me unable to get out of bed.<\/p>\n
Way back I discovered that the stress of academia was not good for me so I became a yoga and meditation teacher. I was told I had PTSD. So for years I struggled and tried to make myself swim and do zumba and yoga four times a week and teach six yoga classes and I got the initial high from the exercise but then would wake up in the night feeling like I had been savagely beaten up. Migraines started in 2006, the same year I began to be bullied by my boss.<\/p>\n
June 2009 I was verbally attacked several times in front of my colleagues by my boss causing a total breakdown where I continued working but was inwardly fracturing with the strain, pain and stress. Three years later I could no longer even stand to work. All my symptoms were put down to PTSD. November 2015 I was diagnosed, to my surprise (duh!) with ME\/CFS, which suddenly made sense of the confusion that my life had become. Now I try to find a baseline (quite hopeless at it so far\u2014always still doing too much) and go out to a choir once a week and have given up all aerobic physical stuff as I just can’t bear the beaten up sensation that follows it.<\/p>\n
I do sail though, which is ocean sailing. I get my husband to haul several sails up and then I rest for several hours looking at the sea and the sky whilst the boat sails along happily. Perfect. And I write more. I write poems and short stories. And I keep reminding myself that Churchill wrote from his bed and so did Florence Nightingale, and so I keep abreast of the topics I am interested via my laptop sitting propped up in bed. I research and study mindfulness, self-compassion and neuroplasticity. I even gave a presentation at a conference last November. (Wiped me out for weeks afterwards.)<\/p>\n
I am still astonished how physically debilitating ME is. I could rush out of the house right now if one of my kids was in danger. But I would be in pain all over and feel that awful blacking out feeling quite soon after the exertion. And I hate that. But you know, I am trying to learn to be kind to my condition and still find ways to live an interesting and fulfilling life. I have had to learn that my little energy is precious and should be used well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans of ME\/CFS I played trumpet, sang choir, captained the hockey team, sailed and climbed mountains. I traveled the world, sometimes with young children, and I achieved degrees and was busy and always managed to keep going, no matter what. And that was the problem. Because I kept feeling more and more like I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sarah_l.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}