
Today is CFS Awareness Day. “What’s CFS,” you say? Well it stands for chronic fatigue syndrome, a rather poorly named invisible illness that has so much more to it than debilitating fatigue.
To many people it has connotations of laziness and no-hopers who just need to “pull their socks up and get on with life” (yes my friend was told to do that by a doctor!).
But for anyone who has experienced CFS we know we are not lazy or bored or just don’t feel like working anymore. We know we are actually very sick. We need the world to know more about this illness and for it to be taken seriously.
CFS, also known by its hard-to-pronounce and more scientific-sounding name, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or the latest catchy name they’ve come up with, Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disorder (SEID) (rolls right off the tongue, right?) is a condition I’ve been dealing with for almost three years, a condition that took my plans for life and scrunched them up in a little ball to be tossed aside.
I was a busy 26-year-old living in Melbourne, working full-time in publishing, studying my masters of communication part-time, playing lacrosse, having a social life, and busy glorifying how busy I was.
