Marian Robertson. Is now age 57. and has had ME for 18 years. Her doctors don’t think she should be alive

Brought up 4 children during this time. House-bound for first 5 years, then very slow improvement each year. Reached a plateau now – daily life good, can work (teaching) in small amounts and enjoy everyday things to a limitation. Recovery took lots of hard work on diet and help through acupuncture, supplements and homeopathy. Exercise tolerance has improved, but only very slowly – too much brings back the problems always and needs complete rest to recover again. Can now walk for about one hour. Have had a very supportive family. Have to keep to a very strict, wholesome diet.

I had been reluctant to say that I have ME, because I knew I have the worst possible form of it and that most people can’t even imagine it, confusing it with cfs. This is the first time I have seen in writing what I have known all along – it is only what I am doing in alternative medicine and health routines that turned around at least some of the rapid decline of all body systems. Having an anaesthetic was my final trigger and greatly aggravated it to an ultra worst case scenario. Without exception, to this date all doctors I approached in the UK and Eire just ran for the hills. They know I should be dead. I haven’t even been examined, but I had to fight hard to get disability allowance and am denied all the medical furniture and supplements I need on the basis of one doctor’s opinion that I have CFS! Vance Spence, a top ME biomedical researcher in the UK says I don’t have ME because of the anaesthetic – vein damage that presents as ME, and which also killed his father – but he never asked my previous medical history!