Taking bearings on the mountainside

I became illfifteen years ago. I know now that I was post-viral, but neither I nor my (navy) doctors had a clue at the time.Being an endurance athletemynatural responsewas to fightthe conditionand force my body back into shape. Fight back to fitness! No surrender! Yeah, right.

Aftertwo years of working harder and harder, withrapidly diminishing results, I crashed completely. I was nearly paralysed for two years, then bedbound for several more, then in a wheelchair, then walking on sticks, etc. Many relapses. Many many disappointments. Two brief but horrible episodes of reactive depression (hardly surprising, eh?) andoccasionalfoolish stunts with painful paybacks.

It has been a long uphill journey: apainful and at times distressing one. And I wouldn't change it for the world. I am who I am because of the mountain road I've travelled.

This summer I've reached a place from where I can look up to where I want to go, and back down to where I've come from. The visibility is good and I have breath to talk. I'd like to tell you some of the things that helped me survive the scary early days and the new things that have helped me start to thrive this year.

Themostinformative places and the best places to make contacts, when I was newly diagnosed,were the ME Association [link= http://www.meassociation.org.uk/ ] http://www.meassociation.org.uk/ [/link] and Action for ME [link= http://www.afme.org.uk/ ] http://www.afme.org.uk/ [/link]. When I was first diagnosed the MEA tended to be more info-orientated while Action for MEseemed more a crusading group, but Idon't know if that's still the case.As far as I'm aware they both provide good solid information.

The 25% Group[link= http://www.25megroup.org/ ] http://www.25megroup.org/ [/link] might be a helpful resource for severely affected sufferers.

One of the most importantand positive steps in my journey was to find a GP who believes in the existence of ME andis sympathetic towards the sufferer's situation (not least in relation to benefits), and who is both knowledgeable about the disease and open minded regarding treatments. Some people fall on their feet immediately witha goodGP, while others never find one. I found mine on the fourth attempt, after about four years of looking and sounding other local sufferers out. He's worth his weight in gold.

Equally important was learning to take responsibility for learning about and managingmy own health. This has meant, mainly:

• re-training myself out ofperfectionist thought and behaviour patterns, and accepting that what I can manage to do easily on any given day (ie. withoutcausing damage or pain either in the immediate future or further down the line) is the best I can do that day;
• listening to my body and acting on what it tells me with regard to diet, seasonal variations and patterns, environmental factors, and rest;
• educating myself sufficiently (without becoming obsessed) so that I can take an active role in my health management; and
• not swallowing automatically every pill and potion shoved in my direction by conventional medicine and/or complementary practitioners (there are trends and fashions among interested and sympatheticmedics and healers, and no sufferer should ever forget that what works for one won't necessarily work for another, however glowing the medical journals are about the latest thing).

It took me many years of peaks and troughs - many of the relapses beingcaused by my own stupidity in myeagerness to get better faster than my body was prepared to allow - before I reached a point where I could take advantage of the two things that I believehaveaccelerated my healing: massage and yoga.

Fiona Agombar's book Beat Fatigue With Yoga is a godsend an