Guest blog by: Joan McParland, Founder & Voluntary Coordinator
Hope 4 ME & Fibro  Northern Ireland

Since a novel virus turned the entire world upside down, this needs to be said for others to understand the predicament #ME patients now find themselves in.

The world sees a shocking Covid-19 nightmare scenario, WE see a mirror image of #ME.
In the parallel world of the healthy…

• This Covid-19 pandemic brought life as we knew it to an abrupt halt…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic took careers, social lives, family lives away…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic brought an end to travel and exotic holidays…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic brought self-isolation, and being trapped in homes…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic brought fear of the unknown, an invisible invader…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic does not have effective treatment, or a cure…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic brings a possibility of death and emerging signs of chronic illness…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic brought an inadequate NHS service to light…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic does not discriminate by age, race, financial status, political or sexual persuasion…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic brought sudden shock and horror and will result in post traumatic stress…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic revealed a hell nobody knew existed…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic brings financial ruin and the need to exist on social security benefits…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME
• This Covid-19 pandemic will bring increased suicide rates due to mental and/or physical suffering…
     this is what happens when someone gets #ME

This Covid-19 pandemic brought unlimited financial resources in a frenzied attempt to replenish a run down NHS service, unlimited financial resources for biomedical research into effective treatments, vaccines and someday a cure.

BUT

This is NOT what happens when somebody gets #ME nor even when an estimated 17 million people around the globe, have #ME.

We are watching in both amazement and horror, as reports are now appearing of possible permanent post-viral damage in Covid-19 patients. Will they too be subjected to disbelief when they don’t recover quickly enough, or never recover. Will they be ’exercised’ into an even worse state, or sent to cognitive behavioral therapists because the viral load has disappeared and routine blood tests are ‘normal’?

Will the money tree run out and they’ll have to pay for biomedical research? Will they become invisible or airbrushed away, just like those discovered to have been overlooked in care homes during the current pandemic.

Will we be validated with all the new biomedical research into post-viral fatigue states, only time will tell and we are well accustomed to waiting, for decades.

THIS is why we have to scrutinize and question healthcare more closely than most, it’s a response to the decades of gas-lighting, neglect, abuse, indifference and the fact we’ve been left to rot, due to the influences of a very powerful U.K. psychiatric lobby.

This is WAY much bigger and probably way outside the understanding of anyone who hasn’t experienced the losses above.

See information HERE about the PACE trial and the role of the UK psychiatric lobby.