Hi Teejaykay,
Now wait a minute. Not so fast. When ME is mild, some people with it can do things like this or attempt them. We would need to be near her to her to listen to her breathing and also observe her during the climb and see if she is experiencing worse altitude symptoms than those around her.
I know because I had mild ME for 14 years after being bedridden the first year and I was able to do forest fighting in the summer and teach full time and I went to white water raft guide school etc... However, I breathed way harder than anyone else, people on the fire line would call out, "Oh tee, you don't have to breathe like that!" So it was very loud and yes I did. I couldn't help it.
I was also in tremendous pain on some fires but that was due to my period. Back then I could push through pain etc... however when after the fires I would often spend most of my time lying down when at home. I knew it was because of the CFS. So we would also want to watch that lady after the climb and see if she's able to perform normal daily activities or if she seems to have PEM.
I didn't mean to imply that the only people with ME are those lying in bed all day or that you ca't have it if you can work and do things. In fact it was CFS with it's definition of having six months of exhaustion that brought that idea in as well as glandular fever where people are often very sick to begin with. In fact ME can be insidious.
Dr Ramsay gave as an example patient a colleague who could work normally for a few months then have a bad few weeks.
I managed to carry on at school, work Saturdays, go out dancing and hill walking. But I would have attacks of paralysis, blindness and terrible pain. As a teenager I didn't let a little thing like pain slow me down :Retro smile:
In fact I think this slow mild impact that you can push through can lead to a bad outcome as the underlying damage builds up. This could another reason for the "I spent a year in bed now I can do anything I want" syndrome as the enforced rest stops the damage to the immune system, heart, whatever that builds up with a continual mild overdoing it.
Having said that, struggling to work or even have a social life is one thing, climbing Everest is another. And why mention she has ME? This sort of article in the paper gives out completely the wrong message and we all suffer for it. If she does have ME she is being incredibly foolish, has she not heard of Lynn Gilderdale and Sofia Mirza? Why are her family letting her go? The end point we all fear is bedridden in the dark 24 hours a day unable to talk to anyone or to feel touch. I hope she doesn't have ME because she is risking that by pushing her body to extremes.
Mithriel