One Spring morning 1n 1997, I woke alongside my (then )wife, feeling as though I had been shot in the head...She gasped in horror..."What's in God's name, has happened to you?" she said. "You look like you've had a stroke or heart-attack!"

Cutting to the chase, after the initial chaos and upheaval...For the first six months or so, I underwent numerous blood and medical tests to try to ascertain exactly what was wrong with me. I was progressively diagnosed by several specialists with a complex and debilitating, neuro-muscular & auto-immune disease: CFS/ME. (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgec Encephemyalitis) From morning jogger, tennis player and business person, to couch-potato and almost useless Husband and father. The next 2 years, before my marriage collapsed under the pressure of it, was a period in my life like no other - decimated by an insidious, contentious and largely, invisible illness.

I have had the illness for over a decade and although I've learned how to manage it, and am more mobile and functional than many who have it, all the original symptoms in fluctuating severity, are still present...The aching joints, the tender muscles, the cognitive disorders and brain fog, the sleep and digestion problems, the emotional fragility/periodic depression, and an array of other frustrating annoyances, synonymous with this disease.

But that's only half of it. The other half of the problem has to do with "other people's perceptions" of the illness..." You look fine to me..." / "Maybe you just need a holiday..." / "Take some vitamins and get over it..." / "You're probably depressed..." etc, etc - Almost always with a note of impatience or disbelief. Although The world Health Organization classifies the illness as a genuine neuro-muscular and auto-immune disease, and the AMA accept that classification, the general public and even many "uninformed" doctors, and specialists themselves, are still quite ignorant and skeptical and intolerant towards it.

Who wants an invisible illness? Not wishing to minimize the awful nature of many more visible diseases, the social frustration and alienation of invisible illness, causes people who suffer with them, much unnecessary, additional suffering. They live in a shrinking world, as it is. Why add to their misery, with uninformed speculation, conjecture and intolerance? I've offered people literature and web page links to "read up on it"...Guess what the common response is? Yeah...right!

Learn more about this author, Jake Lloyd Jones.
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