Flat on Your Back and Moving On - An ME/CFS Patient's Story

From: ImmuneSupport.com
by Mark Pullinger

Mark Pullinger was a promising young musician when Chronic Fatigue Syndrome struck. It turned his whole world upside down...

"You have a post-viral fatigue syndrome. Six months and you'll be back to normal." My GP seemed so reassuring.

He had a kind, affectionate face and a comforting smile that gave him the aura of being constantly amused. He said, "Right, Mark," and, "Exactly," a lot and bore an uncanny resemblance to the news presenter, Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

His room, the first on the left down a corridor adjacent to the waiting room, was peppered with the standard National Health Service doctors' toys; a photo of his teenage daughter skiing, perhaps in the Alps, sat proudly on his desk. She seemed the picture of good health, which was encouraging.

I had made the familiar drive down to the surgery earlier that morning and was eager, if a little anxious, to hear the results of some tests taken a week before.

It was July and the record hot summer of 2003. I'd just finished my first year at a London music conservatoire. I was 19 and giddy with a youthful ambition, high on life. My days had been spent in classrooms amidst the swirling sounds of jazz's legends - Miles Davis, John Coltrane; our task to decipher and absorb, from the records, as much as we could about the genre, one day hoping to make our own mark as musicians; my evenings, in London bars and jazz clubs with friends or someone I had recently started a relationship with. A career as a saxophonist was gaining momentum. It occurred to me that I had probably never been so content.

It had all started a month beforehand. Fraught with the anxieties that could only mean end-of-term concerts, I had started to feel run down. At first, it just seemed like a run-of-the-mill flu-like illness and I was able to carry on more or less as normal until, one morning, I woke up to find that I couldn’t move. I was awake and could wiggle my hands and toes, but the part of my brain responsible for getting up didn't seem to be working...

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Flat on Your Back and Moving On