I know, I know. All my good intentions to blog more regularly seem to have failed me.

I'm particulary aware that I had planned to comment on the meeting I went to a fortnight ago. Today is the second one, and I'm leaving in a little over an hour so I now have a deadline to hit if I want to post before the event.

I must confess that the first meeting wasn't as painful as I'd expected. It was a more structured than I'd thought it might be for a start. The clinic nurse leading it took us though several flip charts across the two hours of information that to be honest was in the printed material we'd been given but kicked off various discussions amongst the 10 of us there. (One lady dropped out half way through feeling it wasn't for her.). And that was the real benefit of going I guess. Hearing other people's experiences and discovering that you're not alone in some of the odd symptoms that no one really 'gets' just from a description of how you're feeling. Perhaps 'discovering' isn't the right word in that sentence. Intellectually I'd known it was the case, but this was much more real.

We're a varied bunch as well. The ex-military guy in his biker gang jacket, the matriarch with a gentle smile, the mother-earth vegetarian marathon runner, the young girl who is sadly wheelchair bound on occasions although walking at present, a long-haired self-confessed layabout who uses humor as a defence mechanism. Apparently were unsual in having so many guys: 4 out of the ten. Normally, we were told, it is just one or at most two. And it was interesting seeing bits of behavior that I recognize so intimately. The guy with his own stash of tea bags and biscuits because of the diet he's trying, the girl who needed a blanket because she was feeling the cold so much, the lady who was uncertain she had the strength to be as 'social' as the meeting required.

It was good to share experience and as long as it doesn't turn into a moaning shop for our symptoms, then hopefully it will be useful. But there are no 'solutions', just better understanding and possible coping strategies. All of us, when asked to out post-its on the flip chart at the beginning about what we wanted from the session, had variations on 'healing' amongst other things.

Have decided to take the plunge.

Switch off now if a health based blog reciting symptoms, whinging and general depression is your idea of hell.

But it's official: the reason I've been feeling so s#!+ the last year or so is because I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Or ME as it's sometimes called in the UK. Please excuse the language (or at least the typographical flamboyance) but on this occasion it seems both warranted and accurate. In fact it's difficult to find a word that adequately describes just how lousy, and how endlessly lousy, I feel.

Probably around November/December of 2009 I first noticed something wasn't quite right. Tried to remain in denial for a few months but it became increasingly obvious - my wife could see it in the way I'd sometimes walk - that I could no longer pretend. Eventually had an appointment with local doctor who ran every test she could think of to rule out everything else it could possibly be. But finally there seemed no escape and she referred me to a specialist unit. Funnily enough it's less than a stone's throw from TheOldPlace. It took an age for them to fit me in. Half a year - but the symptoms weren't going anywhere - in fact the continuing decline meant I could be sure it wasn't all in my head. Back in December I had a half hour on the phone to a nurse as a pre-screen. Today I had over an hour with the same nurse, a doctor and someone sitting in observing.

Went through all the symptoms again - the constant lethargy (that's the F for Fatigue), the muscle aches (sometimes pain, like now), the endless of it (that's the C for Chronic) the waking upfeeling like you've not slept, the memory issues - but notice no myalgic encephasomething or 'brain swelling' which is why ME is inaccurate. A bunch ofmothermstuff - i seem to exhibit most of what they look for except perhaps the arthritis like joint aches. Anyway, you can look it up on the web.

What you'll also find, as I did, and as I was told, is that there's no cure, only management. It could get better in time. As you can imagine, that plus it's unremitting nature don't just affect you physically but there's then an emotional and spiritual element. A triple whammy. Terrific.

I'm probably going to focus on how this relates to work, so it isn't perhaps too much of a jump for this blog. I did think about starting a new one, but have decided against it. It even seems moderately sensible to maintain the ambiguity of place and names as I suppose I can conceive of a future where it might not be advisable to have, say, a potential employer connecting the dots. I had luck with S today from TheOldPlace and I should thank her for helping me think through some of the issues. If anyone else wants to comment, please do although I'd ask you to do so with the care and anonymity you've shown in the past. (Or just email!)

Of course, I'm not the most diligent blogger in the first place, so that combined with the tiredness may mean that this goes into abeyance even more effectively than times past. On the other had I've saved a link to Blogger as an 'app' on the iPad so it should make it much more convenient to bother writing anything. It could go either way! In any case, you've been warned...