Welcome to Phoenix Rising!
Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of, and finding treatments for, complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.
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Watch the highly organised ME lobby get to work on this one. They're already at it. Medical journals won't publish articles on ME (except to debunk it) but newspapers will and that's good enough for the lobby. All the evidence its members need is personal experience (I feel bad, I don't want to be told that this is quite normal and most people feel bad most of the time, I certainly don't want to be told that I have some sort of mental illness - I'm not 'mental', hence I've decided that I have an organic condition, even if it's one that behaves according to known medical norms). The lobby also thrives on uncritical publicity in the press through articles such as this.
Some people have unrecognised symptoms and get referred to as having ME, but others who 'have' ME have nothing wrong with them except that they're p----ed off with life. Strangely, all that fatigue never prevents members of the ME lobby from writing articles, letters, e-mails and posts announcing how 'ill' they are. (There are ME sufferers who do nothing but bombard medical doctors and researchers who're critical of this condition with abuse).
To the author: I'm sorry if you're unwell or unappy or both, but face the facts and stop hiding behind the convenient device of ME. Most of us are unhappy most of the time; some of us are ill. We largely just get on with things as best we can. The very idea of ME is an insult to those with genuine conditions such as MS, but they get on with life. You should try that as a therapy.
All the evidence its members need is personal experience (I feel bad, I don't want to be told that this is quite normal and most people feel bad most of the time
It seems apt!I think we should call such people "illness deniers".
Pushing yourself through a university course when mildly affected could make you permanently severely disabled.
That is what my Honours year and my PhD candidacy did, though more at the severe end of moderate for me. I have never recovered.
Hi, Mel9. It wasn't chipmunk1 that wrote that. That was the presumably now deleted post on The Guardian's site. You can tell when a member is quoting someone else by the quote boxes with theChipmunk's diatribe seems rude and deluded
Why so much anger against the sick?
"The very idea of ME is an insult to those with genuine conditions such as MS, but they get on with life. You should try that as a therapy."