I started feeling exhausted at 14. I couldn’t get out of bed, struggled to get to school, and was wiped out all the time. My parents took me to different doctors, I had loads of tests, but no one could find anything wrong.<\/p>\n
A year later, after being told I had a mental health problem and wasn’t physically ill, I was finally told by a counsellor that I had ME\/CFS. My aunt has it as well, so my family had a bit of a clue. I missed loads of school and lost friends because I was the girl with the weird illness.<\/p>\n
Over the years I’ve managed by pacing myself and prioritizing resting. It affected what I could do when I was at university and I’ve had to change jobs to manage the fatigue.<\/p>\n
In the last 9 years my health has got worse. I’ve now got other conditions as well as ME\/CFS. These also cause chronic pain and chronic fatigue, so because all of my conditions have the same symptoms and none are curable they all have the same treatments.<\/p>\n
I’ve got loads of health support now which is so different from when I was a teenager and ME\/CFS wasn’t known about. I go to a Chronic Fatigue Clinic and a Pain Clinic and get support from my GP, consultants, occupational therapist, sleep therapist, and psychologists. This help has been amazing.<\/p>\n
When I was at my worst in 2014, they helped get me from being bed\/house bound and unable to walk from the sofa to the bathroom to getting back to work in 2 months! Unfortunately, I couldn’t continue to manage to work and after fighting for over a year I still had to leave.
\nI’m now focusing on my health, trying to pace myself, practicing self-care and spending quality time with my friends and family.<\/p>\n
I try to find the joy in the little things and celebrate my achievements even when they’re things like cooking a meal, having a coffee with a friend, or playing with my nephew for an hour or so.<\/p>\n
I have a cleaner and I’ve moved to a ground floor flat because I can’t manage household chores or stairs. I can’t walk very far, so have to be really careful about where I go. I do loads of research before I go somewhere new. I’ve got amazing friends and family who support and look after me when I’m at my worst and celebrate with me when I’m having a good day.<\/p>\n
Chronic Fatigue is so totally different to being tired. Its feeling drained, exhausted, heavy, and utterly useless. The brain fog is my scariest symptom and I hate not being able to think clearly and function for more than a few hours a day. The simplest of adult tasks can take me days or weeks to do and I hate it, but I stay positive and focus on things that make me happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans of ME\/CFS I started feeling exhausted at 14. I couldn’t get out of bed, struggled to get to school, and was wiped out all the time. My parents took me to different doctors, I had loads of tests, but no one could find anything wrong. A year later, after being told I had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":751,"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\/victoria_b.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766"}],"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=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}