4 Quotes by Nina Muirhead

Eighteen months ago, after seeing thirteen different doctors and undergoing multiple tests and investigations, not only was I given a diagnosis of a condition that I didn’t know about or understand, it was an illness I didn’t believe in.

From my experience of ME/CFS there was no psychological component whatsoever, besides which exercise, if anything, was making me worse not better. I was not deconditioned or frightened to exercise. The symptoms were more consistent with a brain tumour or multiple sclerosis. The reality is ME/CFS is a serious, heritable, neurological condition and I was shocked to discover subsequently that my grandmother had died from it aged 42.

ME/CFS is not a rare illness, so how could doctors be getting it so wrong? Have we stopped believing in an entire class of patients for whom we don’t yet have the technology to diagnose or drugs to prescribe?

ME sufferers know full well that there is no present cure for this debilitating illness but equally they do not expect or understand why there is substantial denial within the medical profession of the existence of ME/CFS as a physical condition.