Let me tell you a story.

This is a story about someone just like you, for the sake of argument, let's say he's a man, but this is a story that could just as easily happen to anyone, male or female, young or old.   Perhaps this man is of about your age and height, and maybe he is a well-respected investment banker, or a doctor who runs a successful medical practice.   This man could be a father, a teacher, or professor, a mechanic or a computer programmer, a veterinarian or an accountant.   He is well-liked, well-respected by his peers, is athletic and outgoing, and he loves his wife, his children, and his dog.   But this story is not about this man's waking life; this story is about a man, about someone just like you, who has a terrible nightmare.   One of those nightmares that leave a dark smudge on the mind and darkens the rest of the day with its hollow, grey echo.

This man had a dream that he was very sick....

He dreams....

My body has gone terribly, horribly wrong.

Time is slowing down to the point of a slow-motion replay.   All of my actions take three times as long to perform and require five times the amount of effort.

I'm lying in bed.   I've been lying in bed for a long time,   Weeks, maybe? Months?   Years?   I'm not sure.   I've been lying in this bed as long as I can remember.   It feels as though my whole world has been reduced to the size of my bed.

I can see myself from above.   I look normal, but I feel as though I have fifty pounds tied to my extremities.   My muscles ache as though I've been beaten all over.   A dull persistent headache creeps around my head and tightens like a vice.   My brain is wrapped in clouds of cotton-wool and it feels as though all of my synapses have been rewired by a maniac with a sick sense of humour.   I know that I'm supposed to remember something.   Somthing Important, but my whatever it is that is so important slips like sand through the slippery holes in my mind.

When was the last time I slept?   A crushing exhaustion weights my body to the bed, a hopeless feeling of utter weakness flows though my veins and robs my body of its vitality.   I haven't slpt properly in ages, and it feels like I'll never get a good night's rest again...

My throat hurts, as though I was at a long hockey match and shouting for your home team, or as if I just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes at once.   Even the air I breathe is thicker, and breathing becomes a chore.   In this sick room in my nightmare, just breathing tires me out.

I'm still dreaming in slow motion and I become increasingly anxious that time should speed back up to it's usual pace because everything else is moving normally around me but I can not.   I try to sit up at normal speed, but the faster I try to move the more I stay glued to my bed.   I will myself to get up.   I will myself to be healthy and happy and dressed and out the door on my way to work, but try as I might my body ignores my pleas.

I get more and more anxious.   I begin to notice the absence of certain things.   Certain important things.   My wife?   Where is she?   Why is her wedding ring lying on the bedroom dresser?   She always wears it always, unless...and then my synapses finally fire and I remember everything and wish that I hadn't.

She's left me.   She took the kids.   She couldn't live with me like this anymore.   She couldn't take it.   And then everything else comes flooding back, and I sink deeper into the bed with the weight of all my losses.

My wife?   Gone.

My kids?   Gone, living with their mother, and mad at you for 'not being there'.

My money?   What money?   (Long gone.)

My job?   Gone, along with the company dinners and colleague retreats and insurance benefits and health coverage.

My friends?   The ones who thought I was faking this illness were gone long ago, and the other few, who stuck around, call less and less often.

My bills?   Piling up and unpaid.   If the mortgage isn't paid up this month, and it won't be, I'm going to be kicked out.   I'll have to find some other room to feel sick in.

I am panicking now, really panicking.   My life has fallen completely to pieces and I didn't even see it coming.   What happened?   When did all of these horrible things events occur?   I begin to feel webs of panic cling to my feverish skin, and the walls of my room begin to close in on me.   I try to move, but my body is too weak.   I am helpless.   A nauseating anxiety builds and builds and behind it is the ever-present question that has never been answered:   What is wrong with me?   What is wrong with me?   What is Wrong with Me?

"What is wrong with me?"   The man sits bolt upright as he wakes from his nightmare.   His wife stirs beside him and asks if he is okay.   He looks around his room, at the wedding ring on his wife's finger, and takes a deep grateful breath before lying back down to sleep.

It was all just a bad dream.

But what if the story ended another way?   What if the man woke up, and his wife wasn't there, and the anxiety still clawed at him, and he woke to realise that everything in the dream had become reality.   What if he really had been sick for a long time, without a proper diagnosis?   What if his family really had abandoned him because he became too great a burden for them and he was fired from his job and he was left, isolated and alone and virtually helpless?

Impossible you might say.   Stuff like that just doesn't happen to people.

Unfortunately it does.   That man's nightmare is a reality for people who suffer from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E. aka CFS).   The anxiety, the hopelessness, the terrible weakness and exhaustion and cognitive impairment are all daily realities for those suffering from this serious and chronic condition.   Oftentimes, their predicament is even more drastic that the one outlined above.   The sad story above serves to gain a glimpse of what a person suffering from M.E. lives with on a daily basis, but such descriptions still fall short of giving an accurate, compassionate description of the reality of the patient's predicament.   It's next to impossible to capture the reality of M.E. without having experienced the illness on a first-hand basis, many patients themselves have difficulty coming to terms with how the illness has affected their daily lives.

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is truly a devastating illness.   M.E. infiltrates every aspect of the sufferer's lives and strikes at almost every system of the body and mind.   M.E. affects not only the patient's physical and mental health, but also their emotional state, their professional lives, their home lives, as well as their relationships with family members, colleagues and friends.   No aspect of the patient's lives is spared by the onset of this insidious illness; from the moment that the patients are diagnosed with M.E., their lives are utterly changed.

Written for FM-CFS Canada by a bright beautiful young woman who has struggled with CFS/ME through her teenage years into her twenties, who can sometimes excel in school, hobbies and other pursuits, and who sometimes can barely manage to get out of bed.

Copyright 2002 FM-CFS Canada