• Tigger - My Story

    Hello my name is Tigger and here you can read about how I think I got M.E/CFS. During my childhood I was never a well person any cold or virus or infection that went round I was guaranteed to get even if I didn't go out of the house. After a while my body became to get immune to the antibiotics and as I'm allergic to penicillin the antibiotics I can take are very limited, so after a while they didn't work as well as they should do so I was being ill for longer.

    At one stage my Dr's thought I had something called Glandular Fever as I just couldn't shake this bug off at all and constantly had swollen glands and felt feverish and weak, which was so unlike me as I always had loads of energy and even when I was ill I didn't feel "lifeless" but this time I did. The strange thing was the blood tests came back clear so I didn't have glandular fever. I eventually got rid of this bug thing and was okish but used to get very drained from school very quickly and when I came back from school I was having to sleep. The following year I was pretty much back to normal I had all the bugs as normal but energy wise I felt ok but always had a sore throat or heavy feeling arms and dizzy spells.

    The next year was year 11 at school a very important year as it was my GCSE year. Between September and November I didn't actually make a full week at school it started off I missed Fridays as was to tired to get out of bed had the weekend to recover then make on Monday's then I missed Thursdays and Friday's and was to tired and weak some days I couldn't even get out of bed on the occasionally Saturday I would go up the town but after an hour I would collapse as my legs gave way. One day when I woke up I felt so dizzy I had to lie down again I then attempted to sit up again and still felt dizzy and really weak. I struggled getting my uniform on that day after telling mum how I felt I said I'd give school ago as they always phoned her if I was ill anyway.

    I walked to the bus stop and sat down I did my two lessons before my break well at least I think I did as next thing I remember is waking up in my bed. Apparently I had collapsed at school and my teacher had to carry me from one end to the other. I don't really remember much else about that weekend as I slept for most of it and didn't really wake up for food. When Monday came along I didn't feel any better so mum took me to the dr's I felt dizzy and kept passing out in front of him he ordered more blood tests which all came back clear. He then referred me to a specialist where he diagnosed me with M.E for the rest of that year I was sofa bound as didn't have the energy or strength to get up let alone go to bed so missed out on getting any GCSE's.

    Five years on I still struggle with this illness and find I can't do as much as I'd like to. But thankfully I am able to get out of bed and go for short walks although I do still have bad days when I cant do anything at all I have also managed to achieve three GCSE's and knowledge in some other subjects I have also learnt the value of not taking things for granted. To this day I still don't know what really caused me to be ill I think it may have been viruses and stress and maybe even burning the candle at both ends when I was that bit younger.