Born in 1986, I spent my first 12½ years playing with friends, going to school, learning music and dancing, and generally being a healthy, happy child.

Poorly Bit

The following 6½ years, however, were quite different. I just about managed my first year of secondary school - albeit with more than a handful of sick days - but after 8 months of what my Mum quite often thought was me being a lazy, unfit, moody teenager (but was actually me feeling very unwell) in October 1999 I was finally diagnosed with M.E.

I didn't have the energy to get to - let alone walk around - school any more, so I had as much home tuition as I could manage which turned out to be a total of about an hour or two a week. My energy levels and symptoms varied day to day and week to week. Sometimes I couldn't find the energy to speak, other times I felt near recovered.

Like a lot of people with M.E, after finding out the doctors couldn't do anything for me, I went looking for alternatives. I tried Homeopathy, Kinesiology, Nutrition, Acupressure, Reflexology, Hypnotherapy (on its own, no NLP etc - it's quite different), the Anti Candida diet. All of these helped, some more than others, but none of them were enough and I dread to think how much was spent on all the treatments over the years! I also had conversations with Amir Norris who, at the time, helped people with M.E. over the phone. He helped them find what worked for them, slowly helping them rebuild their lives. Amir helped me a lot, sometimes just using his counselling skills (who doesn't need somebody to talk to when they're stuck in bed all day?). The best thing he helped me with was my sleep pattern. We got it from sleeping 2-4am until 12-1pm to sleeping 10pm until 8am in a matter of a couple of nights and that made such a difference to my health. Like the other treatments it was good, but not quite enough.

Life went on around me, I lost contact with many of my friends who were growing up and enjoying their own lives. I joined AYME (the Association of Young People with M.E.) and found my own social network. My friends were all spread around the country, so we mainly talked via the internet and texts - this was the basis of most of my teenage social life. They were fantastic support though, I never needed to explain how I was feeling because they understood anyway. We rarely even talked about M.E. - why would we need to?

In February 2005 I went downhill. Until this point I had only ever needed to use a wheelchair for going out shopping etc, but I now needed to use it for getting round the house. I still had good and bad days - bad being times when all the energy I had went into breathing and keeping my heart beating, and good being sometimes able to walk a step or two.

My health fluctuated like that for a few months. I tried my best with pacing, diet, etc. I managed eventually to keep myself from getting any worse by strictly pacing any activity (activity at this level being things like half an hour of watching T.V, eating, going to the toilet...) with complete rest (light and sound cut out and emptying my mind).