For many, the holiday season can be cruel - by Llewellyn King

[Bob]

For many, the holiday season can be cruel
BY LLEWELLYN KING
November 20, 2014
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/11/20/3499530_for-many-the-holiday-season-can.html

T.S. Eliot may have had it wrong: The cruelest months are November and December, when the holidays are upon us, not April. For those who are broken – broken in all the ways that people can be broken – the holidays are a special hell.

The bedridden, the incarcerated, the mourners, the maimed from accidents, disease or wars, the heartbroken – either those who have had their hearts broken by lovers or others, or those who have had no one in their lives – endure the holidays in anguish, hurting even more than the permanent hurt that has become their lives.

I write and broadcast about one disease in particular, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), also called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It is a disease largely orphaned by the medical community which has no test for it – cannot say with assurance that a patient has it until months of debility validate that it is ME. In medical parlance, there are no biological markers. What is known is that it is almost certainly a disease of the immune system, and that there is no cure. It also has no celebrity benefactors and no lobby in Washington.

I think of it as a terrorist disease, which takes its patents hostage and confines them in an alternative world of muscle pain, headaches, diarrhea, dizziness, brain fog and almost permanent collapse. Some are adversely affected by light, others by sound.

Read more:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/11/20/3499530_for-many-the-holiday-season-can.html

 

[snowathlete]

Well written. Good stuff.

 

[rosie26]

I really like the way this guy writes about our illness, so good.

 

[SDSue]

Thanks for sharing, @Bob. It's always nice to see our story getting in the press.