2005
Falling Ill
2005 was a pretty eventful year for me, even before I got ill, which was no surprise given I was fourteen years old at the time. Like most people that age I was balancing life with friends with school and extra-curricular activities, along with the constant battle of growing up and fitting in. In my spare time I played the flute, which saw me attend the council run Performing Arts Centre each Saturday morning to play in a concert band. At school I took both flute and oboe lessons and played in both the junior and senior school bands.
My love of music also extended to bands and artists who I became passionate about. In February 2005 I attended my first ever concert; Green Day at Hammersmith Apollo in London. I had inadvertently gained a reputation at school as the Green Day loving girl, with pictures adorning the inside of my locker and lyrics written on every available space of my pencil case.
Education wise, I did well at school. My fear of breaking the rules was the main cause of my success; I simply couldn’t not too my homework. I did well in tests, because I was scared of failing. That year I took part in a French Exchange that would see me visit France, my first ever trip abroad, at the start of the year and later have my exchange partner to stay in return.
So things were pretty hectic but I was healthy. My first blip that year came in the form of middle ear infections which were to strike me down in the run up to Year 9 SATs. I had time off school and eventually my ear drums perforated, causing much pain. I was able to return to school in the nick of time and sit my exams, albeit with considerations put in place, in what was to be a strange foreshadowing of things to come over the next few years. But at the time I wasn’t to know any of this. I sat most of my SATs as normal with the exception of the maths listening exam, due to the fact my hearing was yet to return to normal. I sat that one exam in a separate room, with my best friend who suffers from a hearing impairment, where we had the questions read aloud to us instead of listening to them on a tape.
Summer was a busy time as well with just my second ever trip abroad coming a few months later in the form of a holiday with a friend. I returned to the UK and the following week I went off on my family holiday, to one of our usual British coastal haunts. It was one of the best summers I remember, but the events of the next few years were to change the course of my life forever.
I was fourteen when I first fell ill, with what was suspected as glandular fever. It was September 2005 and I had just started Year 10, the first year of GCSE work. Having already spent a few days of school with an outer ear infection (different from my previous ear troubles but later a doctor would connect the two events), I had returned, only to wake up one morning with a headache. I had taken painkillers and carried on as normal, going to school with a packet of paracetamol in my lunchbox and making it through the school day. By eight o’clock that evening, however, I was so drained of energy that I climbed straight in to bed and fell asleep almost instantly. The next morning my mum struggled to wake me, I couldn’t get out of bed, my glands were swollen and I had a sore throat and bad headache.
After spending the summer holidaying with a friend the two of us had of course spent an awful lot of time together, including a week where I stayed at her house during the same time her boyfriend was there. He had been struck down weeks later with glandular fever, something which my friend’s mum had rang to inform us about, but I hadn’t thought much about it and it at the time. On the same day I had woken up with swollen glands, my mum received a phone call saying that my friend was suffering the same symptoms too. All signs seemed to point towards both of us having caught glandular fever.
As the weeks went on, I was to remain confined to bed the majority of the time, as well as developing sensitivity to light, meaning I was living in the dark with my curtains drawn constantly. This light sensitivity became so bad that I was unable to stand the brightness of my TV, or the screen of my phone. I lived with only the radio for company whilst I drifted in and out of sleep throughout the day. Even my sister was urged to stay out of my room for fear that she would catch glandular fever too. The main problem being the fact we shared a bedroom.
Whilst I underwent numerous blood tests for glandular fever that kept coming back negative, I was still struggling with outer ear infections, meaning I was back and forth from doctors, subsequently draining me of even more energy. When the ear infections wouldn’t stop coming back, I was referred to ENT, and would make several trips there to have my ears suctioned and tests done, all whilst struggling with sore throats, headaches, painful glands and utter exhaustion. On top of this, I wasn’t sleeping at night time, and was relying on Nytol tablets to help me get the sleep I so desperately needed and stop me lying awake for hours during the night.
Eventually I did manage to improve, my symptoms began to ease off and my quality of life improved bit by bit. I started watching the TV with sunglasses on, eventually not needing them at all, and my energy levels picked up. It looked like the worst of what I had was over. I started looking at school work, which I had been sent by the school but which had as yet lain untouched, and spent my days lying on the sofa with the telly on. By Christmas I was thinking of school, of trying to catch up what I’d missed and heading back to rejoin my lessons. I went to my form’s Christmas party having spent months away from my classmates and things were looking up. I was still drained, but could only assume it was the effect of the glandular fever, and that’s I’d be right as rain in a few months.
Keep checking back for the next installment of my story, and in the mean time my "thing worth sharing" is the Association of Young People with M.E's website, where you can find a wealth of information about the condition as well as information about the great work they do. http://www.ayme.org.uk/
Thank you!
Sarah x
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