I got ill when I was thirteen before I had any qualifications. My sister is a lot older than me and I knew really early that I wanted to go to university someday, but when I became ill I had to face the reality that it may never be possible for me and this illness could be all I have for the rest of my life. It took me over a year to get a diagnosis at which point it was clear my doctor had no knowledge about ME\/CFS. He told me that there was a local specialist service, but there was nothing they could do for me and that I seemed to be showing improvement, so it was likely I was starting to recover. I tried to go back to school full time, but I soon crashed and couldn’t be on my feet for more than 5 minutes a day.<\/p>\n
When I read things from this time it feels surreal like a dream it’s like I wasn’t awake. Eventually, I saw another doctor who gave me a referral to the local ME\/CFS service who were able to put me in touch with a local hospital school where I ended up achieving high grades.<\/p>\n
I then managed to start 6th form on a normal timetable, but I was still struggling every day. People didn’t see this in me, they thought I’d recovered and there was nothing wrong with me– even people who I thought knew me well. I could see the skepticism they had. It was just easier to pretend I was normal, but this made me withdraw a lot socially because I was constantly lying and hiding such a huge part of my life for fear of judgement.<\/p>\n
I came out of 6th form with 2 As and a B and I managed to build up enough strength to entertain the idea of going to university. I was also determined to be as up front about my health as possible and this was the best thought I’ve ever had.
\nMy first year at university was really hard. I ended up in halls with some very judgmental people who could never understand my situation, but I have meet a few gems who I\u2019ve been able to open up to about my health without inhibition. I owe my achievements and my new-found confidence to every single person who has ever shown an interest or asked about my health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans of ME\/CFS I got ill when I was thirteen before I had any qualifications. My sister is a lot older than me and I knew really early that I wanted to go to university someday, but when I became ill I had to face the reality that it may never be possible for me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":689,"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\/bryony.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709"}],"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=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}