Running for ME sufferers #MillionsMissing
TESSA LAWLOR is raising money for ME Research UK
Story
I’m here because I want to raise money for ME sufferers.
What is ME?
ME is a life sapping illness that currently has no cure.
I think the best way to describe ME is with the example of my friends’ son Ethan.
Many of you reading this will know Ethan: he’s a bright, funny, handsome, and gregarious young man. But you probably won’t have seen him for the last couple of years, that’s because Ethan has ME.
As many of our sons and daughters have been flourishing at school, university, or starting their careers, Ethan has been suffering.
Twice Ethan started at Bristol; twice he had to drop out. He was constantly exhausted, unable to cope with physical effort, and completely unable to concentrate. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, nor did his parents, nor did the university. The condition was originally diagnosed as depression, but it wasn’t depression, it was ME.
It got worse and worse: after a few months he was unable to leave his bed at all, and hardly able to speak.During ‘better’ phases, he may manage a couple of hours out of bed, but even that leaves him utterly exhausted. It is with good reason that ME is sometimes called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
At times, Ethan says, his "brain fog" is so bad that when people speak to him :"it's like they're speaking a foreign language; a language I don’t understand.” Every morning, he wakes up with pain in his neck, back, and limbs, and there are many other side effects: headaches, confusion, dizziness, hypersensitivity to light, and the debilitating inability to concentrate.
The brutal truth is that we just don’t know enough about this terrible affliction, an affliction which can strike at any age.
Furthermore, it is a very difficult condition to diagnose: Ethan was very ill for more than a year before doctors saw the condition for what it was. As you can see, there's a desperate need for research funding. There must be a clinical explanation and a way to help sufferers return to a normal life.
I really hope you will help.
I’m really quite new to running, I only took it up last April. I had never run properly before then and was completely exhausted by my first 100m run, but I persisted, running through the long hot summer and into autumn. It has given me a huge amount of joy, just the kind of joy which is so sadly not available to ME sufferers. This will be my first Half Marathon.