M.E. Awareness Week 8th - 16th May 2010

This week (8th - 16th May 2010) is ME Awareness Week and tomorrow (12th May) is ME Awareness Day. Little is known about ME - no-one knows what causes it and there is no cure. However there are techniques such as pacing, graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy which can help some people to manage their ME. Many people don't understand about ME which leads to lots of prejudice against those of us which suffer from it (250,000 people in the UK alone). Please help to spread the word this week by putting something on your blog, Twitter or Facebook page. Thanks.

ME affects all sufferers differently - they have different symptoms and different severities of those symptoms. You can see a scale of ME severity here. I'm lucky that I only suffer from mild ME, but lots of people suffer very severely and have to spend time lying flat in bed in silence and in the dark and have to be fed by tube. A girl I've met through AYME called Vikki made this video about severe ME so please have a look.

I'm sure you know how ME affects me from reading my blog, so I thought I'd give you some links to videos made by people I know who have ME where they talk about ME affects them. People have different symptoms and I know I'm lucky not to be affected by some of the most disabling ones such as constant severe pain and muscle weakness causing difficulty walking. You can see Daisy's video here and Chlay's video here. You might need to turn the volume on your computer up to hear some of these videos.

To find out more about ME there are some medical information sheets on AYME here and this video is really informative. I've printed out this sheet to give to some of my friends to help them understand how ME affects me, but some people prefer to explain how ME affects them using The Spoon Theory. The Spoon Theory was originally written to explain Lupus but it works well to explain ME too. I was pointed to this on the Internet which was written by an ME sufferer to help explain ME to non-sufferers.

AYME is a charity which has been a huge support to me since I was diagnosed with ME last summer. It supports young people under the age of 26 who suffer from ME and provides a supportive forum, bimonthly magazines and special services for those severely affected by ME.

I know I've included lots of links to things to watch and read in this blog entry. Please take the time to watch the videos and read the documents to better understand how disabling ME can be and help to raise awareness of it. Thanks.