The “60%” recovery rate that Esther Rantzen quoted in the Radio Berkshire program was from Professor Leslie Findlay, as quoted by Esther’s daughter Emily Wilcox in the first “Emily’s cured” Daily Mail article below.
Celebrity Esther Rantzen and her daughter Emily Wilcox claimed in the national paper, the Daily Mail, that Emily was cured of ME - TWICE.
Cure number one was in 2001-2 and Esther and Emily put the recovery down to graded exercise as her consultant Professor Findlay told her that she would recover with it. The first cure article mentions that the Working Group was about to report its findings which would date the article early 2002. In a second Daily Mail story of late 2006-2007 Esther announced that Emily had been “Saved from a living death” and “cured” by Lightning Process in 2006.
Cure number one 2001/2:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-79042/ME-woman-cure-works-her.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-79042/ME-woman-cure-works-her.html#ixzz145f9D1Y9
ME: how one woman found a cure that works for her
by EMILY WILCOX, Daily Mail
(Emily Wilcox, Esther Rantzen’s daughter): “….at the first meeting with my consultant, Professor Leslie Findley, he said ME is a self-correcting illness. Only 20 per cent of patients remain trapped in it for good. Of the remaining 80 per cent, 60 per cent make a complete return to health and the others have active lives, on condition they pace themselves. For a long time, I didn't believe these statistics, but now I am forced to admit that Professor Findley's optimism was justified. I have come back to life!
“Cognitive behaviour therapy, a structured form of positive thinking taught by a trained therapist, is mistrusted by some ME sufferers. But as well as the physical symptoms of ME, there are other issues such as sleep loss, anxiety and fear. CBT tackles these and so can remove some of the barriers to recovery."
"After a couple of years living with ME, you are likely to feel gloomy. This happened to me and makes me sure that depression is a symptom, not a cause, of the illness.”
“Graded exercise must be tailored to the individual patient's health. It can mean sitting up in bed, walking across a room more often during the day and building up your walking. This is a practice that has been used by my consultant for years at the National ME Centre in Essex.”
“When I was bedbound, graded exercise at first meant being lifted from my bed to sit in a chair for 15 minutes a day. Over the next year, I built up my strength until I could walk around the house unaided”
“In fact, gentle exercise started to stimulate my energy when I alternated it with half-hour rests throughout the day”
“If, five years ago, someone had given me a magic pill that cured me totally, I would have put on my knee-length boots and joined my friends to dance the night away - leaving my anxiety and depression to languish on the sofa without me. As it is, my body has healed itself without much medical intervention… if only the doctors knew how”
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So, in the first mail article (above) Emily states that graded exercise as advised by her consultant neurologist Dr (now Professor) Findlay was responsible for her recovery, or as the Mail puts it “cure” from ME.
But four years later Esther Rantzen announced in the Mail that the structured graded exercise regime previously prescribed by her neurologist had made Emily much more ill than she was to begin with. Its not clear in the second Mail article if the neurologist Esther refers to is Professor Findlay or another doctor.
Esther announces that Emily was “Saved from a living death” by Lightning (in 2006 it sounds like). In the second Daily Mail article Esther says that Emily improved by pushing herself a bit more everyday but then crashed very badly. Then Emily was ‘cured’ again by Lighting.
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Cure number 2 Daily Mail February 2007:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-434248/Saved-living-death.html#ixzz145qtUb7S
Saved from a living death
By ESTHER RANTZEN
Emily revitalised, and Esther, the mother who never stopped believing
For 14 years, Esther Rantzen's daughter Emily had her life destroyed by ME. Trapped in a wheelchair, wasting away, she wanted to die. Now, thanks to radical "mind over matter" therapy, she's cured herself.
“For 14 years I have watched her struggling like a fly in a web while the sticky strands of fatigue paralysed her. Now at last I can say it: Emily is well”.
…“Luckily our consultant neurologist was one of the few at that time - this was 12 years ago - who recognised ME as a genuine illness, and told us that Emily was a classic case. There wasn't much he could do, and he was quite honest about that. He told us that nobody knows what causes ME or how to cure it.
He put her on a management course - to increase gradually what she could do - which she stuck to heroically, alternating two-hour periods of activity and rest all through the day.
But in spite of all her efforts, I watched the illness take over her body. She became hypersensitive to light and noise so that she had to wear earplugs and sunglasses constantly, and we lined her curtains with blackout material.
She lost the capacity to walk upstairs, so we installed a stairlift. When she was unable to walk at all, we got a wheelchair for her. In the end, she spent all day in bed, eyes shut, earplugs in. I used to come home from work and run to her room. She was sheet-white, and her limbs were cold.
Desperate to try and find a way to keep her positive about the body that had become her prison, I would massage her legs, which felt completely lifeless. ME is not officially a life-threatening illness, but this was a living death.”
“When I held her hands they were icy. As I watched the fatigue remorselessly overcome her, and she lay on the sofa each afternoon, and struggled to get up each morning, my heart sank like lead. I had seen all this before. Would we have to install the stairlift again and bring back the wheelchair?”
“Six months ago we heard about the Lightning Process from Jill Moss who founded the Association for Young People with ME (AYME) and had seen it work well with a member of her family. As explained in Good Health last month, The Lightning Process is based on the theory that ME is an illness that affects the body's capacity to deal with adrenaline. This is the hormone the body releases when stressed - in people with ME the levels are abnormal, and they need to "train" their brain to normalise the body's response.
The first step is to tackle the thoughts that trigger the stress reaction - halfway through a negative thought they have to tell themselves to stop. This stops the stress response, and in theory creates new connections in the brain, stimulating the production of endorphins - feel-good brain chemicals.
At "600, the course - in Crouch End, London - wasn't cheap. But Jill doesn't believe in miracle cures any more than I do. She thought it was worthwhile, so Emily, now 28, enrolled. It took three days.
On the day after Emily finished the course I went down to our kitchen and found she had got there before me. There was a sparkle in her eyes I hadn't seen since she was 14. I asked what had happened. "I've done the Lightning Process about 30 times since I got up," she told me.
I continued to watch her all morning. Every few minutes she would talk to herself, coaching herself to withstand the fatigue.
It's a process that takes effort, and I understand that it doesn't work for everyone.
But with joy and relief I am now confident the Lightning Process has worked for Emily. After six months she has started a job, working with children. She has a full, active social life.
I can give up being irrationally, stupidly positive and optimistic, because now, at last, I have a good reason. Emily is well.”
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The point is that the two Daily Mail stories don’t add up: either Emily was cured by graded exercise and ‘time’ in the early 2000s - or she was made more ill by graded exercise (or became more ill anyway) which Esther describes in the second article, but was then cured by Lighting in 2006. Or Esther and Emily can’t tell the difference between remission and recovery.
At this rate Esther Rantzen’s daughter Emily Wilcox is due for her Third ME ‘cure’ next year in 2011! Keep your eyes peeled, it will be reported in florid detail in the Daily Mail!
