Day 5: I want to see... what would you like for you and fellow spoonies?
I would like to see better awareness and understanding of M.E. as the stigma of the condition is pretty poor and sometimes it's difficult to even say to professional that you have M.E. because they simply don't understand - sometimes they don't even believe the illness exists; that its just a set of medically unexplained symptoms; they think that you just need to get up and be more active as resting is just making your fatigue worse and that it's all in your mind and you need to change your mindset.
I would also like to see more research and funding going into M.E. to find better treatments to manage things like symptoms and reduce flares/crashes and hopefully one day a cure for M.E. Progress is being made and it was enlightening to see a recent article in the M.E. Association magazine that talked about how in some cases M.E. is more severe that MS which just helps proves how difficult and life changing M.E. is.
Day-to-day I think we just need to talk more about M.E. to spread awareness and the real life stories of how it affects us individually as M.E. is so unique from person to person. I think also to try and reach out to friends with M.E. as its a very isolating illness, especially to those who are mostly house or bed bound. Just a simple message or a letter in the post can go a long way to ease that isolation.