https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-it-feels-to-treat-your-own-mystery-illness-9lmt5d2x5 Mentions ME a lot, but then it turns out he didn't have it. It's very confusing and makes some false statements. “I must say,” he said, “you don’t strike me as particularly depressed.” “No,” I agreed. “Because that’s what we normally look for in situations like this, where the condition might be chronic fatigue.” The two words fell with a thunk at my feet, like a dropped bag of potatoes. “Or ME, as it’s sometimes known, although the two are quite different,” he noted. Of course I had heard of ME, or myalgic encephalomyelitis. Or at least the crude headlines. It was a relic from the 1980s, wasn’t it? Yuppie flu. Afflicts the highly driven, the rapaciously ambitious. All in the mind — not a medical condition per se? Later, on Google, I dredge up facts: that more than a million Americans have it, 600,000 Brits and rising. There are endless internet entries with the word “controversy”. A hardcore element of purported sufferers insist ME is caused by a virus, rather than being a psychological problem as prominent doctors have suggested. It is a condition that makes a lot of people angry. And I’m at an NHS hospital where a doctor tells me I don’t have the right symptoms: depression, aversion to bright lights and loud noises. It’s more likely a T-cell deficiency, but unclear. “It’s good news,” she says, though there’s no straightforward treatment for it anyway. What do I care what it’s called? It is fatigue and I have come round to my new reality. I spent a full year immersed in the world of alternative healthcare before deciding my plan had reached its natural conclusion. There's a whole load of nonsense about how he cured himself with yoga.
Interesting that he says "I am by now 36 months into my illness..." 3 years. Then after 3 days of 'instruction' from Will, the meditation guru, he starts to recover. 3 years is supposed to be the time when ME becomes chronic. Is it also the time when it can recover? Or is he living in false hope?
I didn't know about this book until the writer followed me on Twitter. Can't access the Times article but found a photo of article on Twitter. Hope upload is readable.. He seemed to suffer from extreme fatigue and slowly recovered, naturally, I think he did yoga and meditation too.
I got access to a free Telegraph article. He seems to have had a nasty flu, which triggered his fatigue. Then he was v prone to other infections. He seems to have recovered spontaneously, after a few years, which is obviously v. good news. At least he is not conflating ME with depression. Interesting to see how he learned about the illness from Internet, and the impressions he came away with. So much inaccuracy as @JohnTheJack says. And seems he didn't have 'chronic fatigue' according to one doctor, who thinks you have to have depression too.
I was about to mention the Telegraph article @Nasim Marie Jafry - though it might be the same chap. I think that article is better than the ST one, on the whole.
I accessed it by signing up (free) but now am being subjected to daily emails from The Times despite opting out of everything! I'll give them about a week to stop, otherwise I may unsubscribe.
Yes, The Telegraph is more informative I think. Again impossible to know if he had full-blown ME or a self-limiting postviral debility. But he was definitely ill after a horrible flu. I think his main symptom fatigue. I looked at the first chapter on Kindle free sample, it seems to be a 'benign', lighthearted look at alternative therapies when conventional medicine can offer you nothing. I haven't seen much press for the book at all, all seems quite muted, and ME not being made explicit. He has also written a book about anxiety and fatherhood. I won't be rushing to buy his Get Well Soon book but hopefully no harmful nonsense in it. I get the impression he was truly bewildered when he started trying to find out about 'chronic fatigue' online.
I know, that is the dread of signing up for free articles, the bombardment with emails thereafter. It is exhausting, and filtering often doesn't work, you just end up unsubscribing.
