18. Signing Off

Left my last post on a bit of a 'cliffhanger' as someone on Twitter called it and for longer than I meant to. 

Life will continue at times on still waters, at times on rocky waves that take me towards the whirlpool. ME adds many more waves but I need to become a better sailor. I'm recognising CBT is showing me the skills to become a better sailor and equipping me with nautical tools that are less chipped and battered. As I previously said, I was ignorant about the range of severity of ME and that some people are bedridden with it and I do count my blessings that I can try to sharpen my sailing skills and fix the damage to the tools, while I recognise many can't.

I've lived thirty years with ME and intend, God-willing, to live another thirty years or more. I'll continue in awe at the power that Simon Wessely and his like-minded colleagues hold over ME but am heartened that the philosophy has not permeated to all ME practitioners and I hope will start to have less influence on people getting benefits, pensions and disabled badges - helped largely by ME services, Charities and Associations providing support and information to weak people trying to ... not beat the system ... but merely get what is needed and deserved.

I'll continue to watch the research with Rituximab and other similar drugs with heartfelt hope. But I've done my up-to-date reading on ME; if you can get beyond the negativity and despair that inevitably comes from people suffering an illness as misunderstood as ME and who are disabled as much by other peoples' opinions of them and their illness, there is positivity and hope that things are getting better and even that one day there might be a diagnosis and a cure. I'm going to hang on to this; it's my life-jacket as I set out.

So, I'm pointing my canoe in the right direction and signing off.