Thread by @leowmya

🧵1/9 Psychologist
"We think your symptoms are psychological." I couldn't get this sentence out of my head. How could my symptoms be psychological? Bulls**.

But what if he was right? I couldn't get rid of the thought & followed the doctors advice & went to see a psychologist.

2/9 It was an old man, around 75. After I have told him about everything, he asked me what bothered me. "My symptoms" I said. “But there has to be something that burdens you mentally” he answered. The following conversation went something like this:

3/9 "Did you have a bad experience in your childhood?"
- "No"
Did you lose a close family member?"
- "No"
Are your parents divorced?
- “No”
He was desperately trying to find something in my past and I was getting more and more confused.

4/9 At the end of the conversation he said "The neurologist won't have sent you to me for nothing. I think your body is afraid of doing sports, something like an anxiety disorder"
Yep, my level of confusion has reached its maximum.

5/9“A physical reason seems to be impossible, otherwise the doctors wouldn’t have send you to me” he added.

My trust in doctors decreased more and more but I was desperate. Very desperate. So I took his advice. He said in the next weeks I should go jogging & when the symptoms..

6/9 start I should continue very slowly, in the best case the symptoms decrease after a while. The same day I went jogging. After a few seconds, I felt very dizzy and shaky. But this time I just kept going and ignored it. At some point, I only saw blurry. It was horrible.

7/9 I “ran” as if I was drunk, thinking I would collapse at any moment. I was so slow that pedestrians could have overtaken me. I stopped at a park bench and tried to form a clear thought. My ears were ringing as if I had tinnitus and cold sweat was running..

8/9 from my forehead, although I was hot. I sat there for half an hour while my head was spinning like crazy. What just happened? It seems that I’ve forgotten how I got here. It was like I was running in trance for the last 15 minutes.

9/9 Today I know that I took a shortcut to become bedridden.

#mecfs #mecfsawareness #pwme #myalgicencephalomyelitis #chronicfatigue #mecfs #mecfsrecovery #mecfsfighter #mecfsgermany #millionsmissing #pots #postexertionalmalaise #pem #biomarker #treatments #disability