In 2009, whilst working at a nursery school, I contracted swine flu. Little did I know then that within six months I would start a battle that has, so far, lasted six years! February 2010, my 22-year old daughter found out that she was expecting a baby, a surprise as we thought that should could not have children due to medical conditions. She also has type 1 diabetes. Within weeks, she was very ill with excessive morning sickness and was hospitalized 14 times during her 8-month pregnancy. This obviously caused me a lot of stress. I was trying to work full time and within weeks I was in the hospital having a lumbar puncture and MRI to see if I had a brain bleed. Fortunately, it was only a cluster migraine! Things went from bad to worse and I was taking so much time off of work thinking I had various viruses. By April, I was unable to work any longer and started my long term sick leave, certified with anxiety\/depression. I received an appointment at our local hospital with a rheumatologist as my GP thought I may have fibromyalgia, but the appointment was in October so I paid to go private. In July 2010 I was diagnosed with ME\/CFS and Fibromyalgia.<\/p>\n
In November 2010, I lost my lovely job. I was devastated as it was the perfect job for me: multi-tasking, diverse. I got to see children all day and work with many people who, at the time, I considered friends! I socialized with many of them outside of work.<\/p>\n
I now only see one person who I worked with! In June 2009, I had a party to celebrate my fiftieth birthday. I invited 100 friends! Funny that now I can count my friends on one hand!<\/p>\n
This awful illness has stripped me of friends, work, socializing, exercising, seeing family, shopping, dancing, painting, photography\u2014all of which were part of my life back before 2010!<\/p>\n
I now have 12 grandchildren who I hardly see. I can only see my mum who lives 40 miles away if my sister or my husband take me because I cannot drive that far due to lack of concentration and fatigue. When I do go to visit her (3 times a year), I have to bed rest the day before and a few days after and I will ache more from sitting in the car for so long.
\nI worked in finance, but now I can barely add up a simple sum. My brain that used to multi-function as second nature now cannot remember simple things like birthdays and anniversaries and my long-term memory is now affected too.
\nI am now trying new treatment for ME\/CFS called Perrin Treatment, I am 5 months in, at the moment not feeling better, maybe worse but was told that this can happen before getting better! I hope and pray that it works and I get my life back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans of ME\/CFS In 2009, whilst working at a nursery school, I contracted swine flu. Little did I know then that within six months I would start a battle that has, so far, lasted six years! February 2010, my 22-year old daughter found out that she was expecting a baby, a surprise as we thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":691,"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\/jayne_p.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711"}],"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=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}