Category Archives: 00 M.E.
Remembering Retha
On Sunday 12th June, Mlindeni and I went to visit Retha for the last time. As Sampson drove us along the coast for an hour and a half to her friend’s flat in Strand, I lay in the back of … Continue reading
#LonghaulersUnite 3: Spotlighting Staminism
This one’s for the MEeps and the LoCos Before you can tackle something, you have to name it. Before sexism and racism were acknowledged as concepts, addressing these issues on an institutional scale was practically impossible. Witness the emergence into … Continue reading
Still Here!
Some friends and family have been wondering where I’m at, so here’s an update. 2022 hasn’t panned out at all as expected but, considering everything, I’m in a good place, mentally, as well as being sheltered in the peaceful and … Continue reading
Still Life
Today I saw the cobra lying by the side of the path about ten metres ahead of me. Coiled up like a liquorice wheel, like a hosepipe, she was so still that for a while I thought she was dead. … Continue reading
A Pause for the Prisoners of Sub-Conscience (Sick Consciousness part 2)
I had a different plan for this blog. But that was before. Before NICE (the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) folded to pressure from Very Important Psychologists at the Royal Colleges on 17th August and halted publication … Continue reading
A Pause for Sophia (Sick Consciousness part 1)
To mark Severe ME Awareness Day 2021, 30 years after I first fell victim to post-viral ‘fatigue’, and 3 years since I first vowed to do it, I finally got strong enough to get a Pause tattoo. In my August … Continue reading
#LonghaulersUnite 2: Chronic COVID Time Bomb Ticking
COVID-19 is not simply a binary threat of life or death: the third outcome is a spectrum of post-viral symptoms seriously affecting even young survivors’ abilities to work, study and parent. A year ago, I wrote about how the growing … Continue reading
#LonghaulersUnite
This is a call for all Long COVID-19 and chronic illness sufferers to come together to make our voices heard. A rallying cry for those too weak to march and protest. A covenant for those physically unable to stand up … Continue reading
DIY Water Traction Therapy or How I Hauled My Way Back from Severe ME
This one’s for my #pwME/POTS/EDS/Fibro/Lyme/MCAS/MCS and all the other ‘MUS’ A year ago, for Severe ME Day, I wrote about my apparently inexorable descent back to the severely disabled state I was in 25 years previously as a consequence of … Continue reading
M.E. Too or Why I am No Longer NOT Speaking to Doctors about Chronic Illness
Three weeks ago, I met the first doctor in 25 years to believe me. She is a gynaecologist and I went to consult her about my intense peri-menopause rather than my autoimmune condition. As symptoms overlap however, I had to … Continue reading
Africa Clockwise 