I have had 22 years of the illness, and most of those years have been in a wilderness of denial, of being told it was all due to stress, overwork, anxiety etc.

The real neurological symptoms are hard to measure because they fluctuate and can vary from hour to hour and day to day. Pain, numbness, muscle weakness and the state of mental function ("brainfog") are all such subjective symptoms one can almost forgive doctors for being influenced into putting us under the "psychosomatic" label.
Even the standard blood tests for inflammation and infection will be abnormal one day, then ok the next.

There are however, more complex and detailed blood and clinical tests which show that we are seriously ill people. These are not routine and when some ME patients have had them carried out by private labs and doctors, the NHS will not act on the evidence.

Let's hope that the efforts of these three young men will bring it home to people all over the country that ME is a terrible disease and that some serious intervention from our health chiefs is long overdue.

Denise Longman,
Address supplied.