M.E. Awareness Week
Oops, just realised from one of my old M.E. friends' facebook profile that this week is M.E. awareness week. I completely didn't realise. So basicly yeah, if there are any of you who aren't aware of M.E., you should be. (Man I suck at raising awareness!) If anyone has any questions about M.E. generally or how it affects me personally I'd be happy to answer them.
Just so you know, my M.E. doesn't affect me anywhere near as badly as it has done in the past, even though I still need to use a wheelchair to get from A to B and shoot with low low poundage bows and do other weak girly things. At my worst I was bed bound and my mum woke me up only to feed me and help me to the bathroom. For about five years I barely left the house. Over the course of my education my M.E. has either directly or inderectly cause me to wind up three academic years behind. Two had to be repeated, one was a gap year last year, becuase I knew I'd crash and burn if I tried to come to uni without a significent period resting first. Thought a year should do it, so I spent a whole year at home twiddling my thumbs.
My M.E. is helped a lot at the moment by a carefully set up support network of PAs to help with day to day tasks, academic support workers to help with my essays and reading and notetakers to take my lecture notes for me. I believe the main reason my M.E. is not as bad as it used to be is becuase this support is allowing me to do the things I need to with less effort.
Unfortunately, there are many children, teenagers and young adults with M.E. who have yet to have these needs identified and many of them fail their GCSEs, A-Levels and degrees through lack of support and understanding. I'm one of the lucky ones at the moment, due in no small part to having a mother who would walk through the fires of hell to make sure I got an equel chance in life.
I just wanted to draw your attention, if only for a moment, to what a terrible illness this is. That's my two pence for today.
Just so you know, my M.E. doesn't affect me anywhere near as badly as it has done in the past, even though I still need to use a wheelchair to get from A to B and shoot with low low poundage bows and do other weak girly things. At my worst I was bed bound and my mum woke me up only to feed me and help me to the bathroom. For about five years I barely left the house. Over the course of my education my M.E. has either directly or inderectly cause me to wind up three academic years behind. Two had to be repeated, one was a gap year last year, becuase I knew I'd crash and burn if I tried to come to uni without a significent period resting first. Thought a year should do it, so I spent a whole year at home twiddling my thumbs.
My M.E. is helped a lot at the moment by a carefully set up support network of PAs to help with day to day tasks, academic support workers to help with my essays and reading and notetakers to take my lecture notes for me. I believe the main reason my M.E. is not as bad as it used to be is becuase this support is allowing me to do the things I need to with less effort.
Unfortunately, there are many children, teenagers and young adults with M.E. who have yet to have these needs identified and many of them fail their GCSEs, A-Levels and degrees through lack of support and understanding. I'm one of the lucky ones at the moment, due in no small part to having a mother who would walk through the fires of hell to make sure I got an equel chance in life.
I just wanted to draw your attention, if only for a moment, to what a terrible illness this is. That's my two pence for today.