Diagnosis of the ME
09.08.06, 10:50 am

Thankyou all for your lovely notes; you're all so wonderful and supportive and I really appreciate it. I've managed to get online again relatively quickly, which is good because I desperately need to write about all this stuff. So we may as well start at the beginning.

I went down to the hospital yesterday morning and sat around in the waiting room for 35 minutes, whilst a load of grannies stared at me and blatantly wondered what it was that I had. I finally got to see Dr Neuro, who had a medical student in there observing with him, and he was a lot chirpier than last time I saw him. He basically recapped all of my symptoms, and then ran through all of my blood tests and said that they all appeared normal - electrolytes, kidney function, liver function, blood count, muscle enzymes. He then asked me how I'd been feeling and I said that I'd gotten worse in the last couple of weeks, and that I'd started to lose the ability to concentrate and got dizzy spells. He finally said that it's what he suspected first time I saw him, and that I appeared to have ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Basically he's going to refer me back to my GP, which he'll do by the end of this week, and I'm then to make an appointment with him next week sometime. I'll then basically be trying different courses of treatment to see if anything improves my symptoms, and if nothing comes of it then I'm to go back and see Dr Neuro again. Finally he asked me if I had any questions, and after clearing up some of the appointments stuff, I said brightly that that was all fine and thankyou very much, shook his hand (like a cold dead fish) and walked off. With the thought, "You've got ME, you've got ME, you've got ME" just going round and round in my head.

I spent most of yesterday on the phone, to be quite honest, telling various friends and family about it all. My dad and my sister seemed quite depressed about it, and I think they're feeling a bit guilty for not taking the mystery illness more seriously at the time. Telling my gran was the hardest, and I downplayed it as much as I could. Becky and Lise seemed pretty gutted, Mel tried to be upbeat, Vicky was just very nice. The more people I told the more depressed I got, and by about 8pm last night I just wanted to lock myself in my room for the rest of the night. Once Lisa and Linda went to bed I went outside and sat on kerb by the flat for about half an hour, until I noticed that I was freezing cold.

And so yeah, this is it. I know it's not the end of the world... it's not AIDS or cancer or leprosy so that's good. I'm so lucky with the timing - if I'd have had to do my finals right now I'd have never gotten a 2:1. I'm lucky I didn't manage to get a job, as there's no way I can work. It's good that I know finally what it is.

But it's also bad. I'm right this moment reading up about it on various websites, which is possibly a bad idea, but whatever, it's my choice. It apparently affects about 1 in a 1000, so lucky me indeed. You know, I'm actually too tired and worn out to go into the emotional side of this whole thing right now. To put it simply, I feel incredibly frustrated, worried and sad. Obviously I don't know how long I'm going to take to recover from this, if I'll recover from this and if any treatments will work... hopefully I'll know more once I go see the doctor next week. The thought of not being able to get a job and having to lie around doing nothing for the forseeable future makes me feel a bit sick. Money is worrying the hell out of me. Lisa appears to be waiting for me to have some sort of emotional breakdown. I think I'm waiting for me to have some sort of emotional breakdown too.

This entry is completely rubbish in describing how I actually feel; I'm really sorry. Going into town in a bit to meet Paddy for lunch, who's totally gutted about the ME thing. I can't wait to see him... seeing Paddy always makes me happy, and I could do with it right now. I think I just need to be around friends in general for the time being.

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