No ... not what you might think
- but ...
..... ME/CFS awareness week, this week.
It so happens that two of my daughters are sufferers. One has been ill for three years, the other has been recently diagnosed. They're amongst the estimated 240,000 sufferers in the UK.
Nobody really yet knows what causes it - though typically it can be triggered by a viral infection, such as a 'flu-like illness, perhaps combined with another stressful event. Up to 25% of sufferers are so severely affected they are house- or bed-bound - some have to be tube-fed. There is no "cure" yet known.
Myalgic Encephalopathy or Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a beastly illness, with many and varied symptoms. Apart from the chronic devastating fatigue (my daughters collapse with it), you can get intense muscle and joint pain, rotten headaches, "brain fog" (confusion, loss of memory, difficulty thinking), severe sleep disturbances, and high sensitivity to being touched, and to things like perfumes, or alcohol, or even prescribed drugs (my youngest daughter became temporarily paralysed after a recent injection for a tooth filling).
It's also a sneaky illness, because it doesn't show up on medical tests currently available. Blood tests etc come back as "normal". So, despite it's having been recognised by the World Health Organisation since 2002, it's not always understood or readily diagnosed.
So that (apart from fund-raising) is what ME/CFS awareness week is all about - could there be a sufferer near you?
More information is on the ME Association website -
http://www.meassociation.org.uk/content/view/90/83/1/1/ and other pages there, and there's also an Association for Young People with ME - here are their "hard facts" -
http://www.ayme.org.uk/article.php?sid=14&id=211
Forgive me for a slightly long post. But if this can help just one person .....
ME Awareness Week. Be aware, and do look after yourselves.
(I'll copy this across to the other forums, if you don't mind.)