A success story

How the illness began, what symptoms I experienced and the treatments I had.

In 1998, at the age of 30, whilst coming out of an extended period of depression and intense psychic stress, I started to suffer from strong lumbago-type symptoms and severe back pain. The pains and sciatica spread progressively over my whole body to a point where I could sit no longer than 10 minutes and could walk only with great difficulty.

I had always been an active person and only 3 years previous to this I had been trekking up to 5600m in the Himalayas, carrying my own backpack without the help of a sherpa. Yet now to sit and work at a computer had become almost impossible. Household work became a titanic enterprise and it was very difficult and painful to carry shopping or pull a trolley. Feelings of chronic and overwhelming tiredness reduced my vitality to its lowest point.

I felt as if I had a constant flu or symptoms similar to the occasions when I was forced to take to my bed with a fever, and I was living this experience constantly.
After only a short time of carrying out any activity I became totally exhausted - as if I had no life energy left. The most basic tasks became a herculean effort with the result that I could only do very little - my life was diminished in every way.
My energy was constantly low and most tasks reduced me to exhaustion.

During the intervening years, because of my condition, I was forced to give up several jobs. I subsequently faced the nightmare of dealing with the unhelpful and complex bureaucracy involved in claiming welfare benefits. I felt very isolated and depressed with the whole situation. My happiness, confidence and creativity had almost been extinguished. I was financially crippled because I had to spend almost all my money on medicines and therapies. All the obvious tests had been carried out by the Doctors, all proving to be negative of course, and it was only after 3 years and after many pilgrimages to several doctors, healers and therapists that I was eventually diagnosed with "Fibromyalgia", considered to be an incurable illness. I like to call this experience the "Donald Duck syndrome" because like poor Donald Duck I was living in a whirl of unlucky and misfortunate events.

My condition even began to affect my relationships with others. I could not complain about my discomfort because people eventually get fed up with someone who is always ill and complaining, and no matter how much treatment I received, the answer was always the same - "no improvement" - I was always at the same point. Others were unable to comprehend the distress and discomfort I was in and I felt that their attitude towards me was either one of indifference or disbelief. As I began to withdraw into isolation, my loneliness and helplessness only deepened.

It's true that on an external level I looked fine - well even - but the essential symptoms were invisible to the physical eyes and the fact that I was suffering from unremitting pains was not obviously apparent.