This article first appeared in March of this year. I thought I would resurrect it.

A light dawned … what had just happened?

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I thought I had been feeling great and then suddenly felt dreadful.

I’d had a negative thought and I felt heavy suddenly, tired and washed out.

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I pondered, was it the negative thought that had caused the downward spiral?

Before that thought I had felt so happy and upbeat. Had I felt like that when I woke up?

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Ah!

No.

I hadn’t.

I had felt ill when I first woke up.

I had stayed in bed a little longer then I had struggled to get up.

My head hurt.

Then automatic life took over, I went to make breakfast.

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The sun was shining. The world looked good. I tidied the kitchen while the kettle boiled, I started to make a To Do list. I thought I was feeling good.

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Then the negative thought hit and my good mood spiralled down.

It wasn’t the negative thought that had changed my mood. My mood was affected by my illness from the first. A positive thought had forced me to get going and the negative had brought me back to where I had been when I first woke up.

I can yo-yo between one positive thought and one negative thought, but underlying it all is an illness and maintaining a positive outlook exhausted me.

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Then one amazing day I lived a life I hadn’t lived for many years. I got up, I got showered and dressed, I got on with the household tasks and then I went outside and did some gardening. I chopped and pruned and weeded and I felt great.

I had many thoughts while working, negative and positive and neither pulled me down or up. They were just thoughts and I could rationalise them. I knew for certain then that I had an illness, a disease, a malfunctioning body. For one day while I was undergoinging my new treatment programme, that illness began to show clear signs of disappearing revealing the light at the end of the tunnel. My thoughts were simply my thoughts which neither upset me or made me over exuberant as has been the case on some occasions when I thought I would go mad with joy.

The Flower Caves of Barbados, Caribbean looking through them to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Light at the end of the Tunnel.

I continue to feel better but I will also have poor days because of doing too much. My too much is quite an amazing amount compared to a few months ago when the too much then was non-existent! My doing more also involves eating foods I have been unable to eat for years. I am very surprised at the unexpected bonuses.

I really feel it is important to understand that CFS/ME is a physical disease with physical symptoms and it needs to understood why we got ill in the first place. I look forward to when Dr Perrin’s diagnosis is officially recognised.

In the meantime I will continue with the Perrin Technique. I am not expecting miracles and I am not expecting to gain full health. I actually expect to go back to square one and I don’t mind even that.

What Dr Perrin has given me is some insight to why I am ill which gives me hope. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

And hope does not disappoint.