I tried not to get mad about the nonsensical Daily Mail poll a few weeks ago but when you see an Observer columnist writing crap about ME it is hard not to react. Am so angry with Kathryn Flett. She claims to have had ME from 1988-1992. She writes that while extremely grateful to have recovered she 'strongly believes there is a psychological component to ME - a point of view that will fail entirely to endear me to the soi-disant community of ME sufferers which occasionally seems slightly more interested in trying to persuade the still-largely-uninterested medical profession to take it seriously than in, say, trying to get sufferers to take more responsibility for their own individual recoveries, by any means necessary'. (She covers herself with that carefully placed 'occasionally'.) I am thrilled for anyone who makes a decent recovery from this illness, but having followed KF's columns for many years, I strongly believe that she never had ME (which I recall she self-diagnosed by reading an article in Time Out - I think she says this in her breakdown-of-marriage memoir The Heart-Shaped Bullet, though it's a long time since I read it). No, I believe she may have had a depressive illness (which is what I understand CFS to be) and perhaps a yeast intolerance as she has written before that she felt much better after cutting out bread*. Who needs neuroimmune research when we've got Kathryn telling us to stop eating bagels?
* pls see comment no.1
* pls see comment no.1
13 comments:
I was hazy about the bread thing, knew I'd read it somewhere, here it is from this 2008 review KF wrote. 'As a former sufferer of CFS myself, this depressed me enormously. While it's certainly miserable as hell, CFS is very often also curable by, among other things, embracing a rigorous diet that not only excludes the questionable attentions of a 'Reverend Death', but also, painfully ironically, processed white flour products such as bagels.'
Yup, all you PWME who are not trying quite hard enough, quit the bagels, and everything will be hunkydory!
Maybe I just don't pick up on it, but do people with other illnesses extrapolate their own experience quite so readily with everyone else? Do people who have an arthritic twinge in their knuckles feel free to tell someone whose whole body is wracked with rhumatoid arthritis how they feel? Do people who have had a pacemaker fitted comment happily on people with chronic heart faliure?
I've liked Kathryn Flett's TV reviews for years.Will never be able to read her column in the same light again
Kate
I like her reviews too, that's why I continued to read her over the years though I always felt her ME claims were dodgy... I wish I could remember more clearly when I first read she'd had ME, but I can't. I think she first referred to it in an Obs. column called Her Indoors or Woman Overboard (I am dredging my memory here & may be talking nonsense!) in late 90s. Maybe she had a post-viral thing in 88, but I recall reading in her memoir that she managed to hide her symptoms from friends & family. How the hell do you hide ME from anyone? I don't recall her going for medical help, what sticks in my mind is her reading an article in Time Out and thinking then she had ME. Anyway, whatever her history of illness, she did not have neurological ME as I - and most others - understand it and it is utterly crass for her to venture forth her psychological component opinions. It's so 80s. Such views don't hold water anymore and she should know better. Maybe she just wants to stir up controversy for her column.
It's funny you should say that it's so 80s. I was just thinking the same. And someone who self-diagnoses based on a Time Out article, "cures" themselves by avoiding bagels, and just happens to write a rather self-obsessed column in a Sunday broadsheet (I remember her column being pretty tedious years ago - all about her divorce?), fits the horrible 80s stereotype of having"yuppie flu". Thanks a bunch Kathryn...
Hey Amy, I think her weekly columns formed the basis of what became the memoir - again, I wish I could be clearer about her references to the illness, is so long since I read the memoir. But I always had a bad feeling and today's article is disgraceful. Really, how dare she. And 'soi-disant' is such a put down.
Dear NMJ,
Hi.
Sincerely,
Maht
p.s. Apologies that I could not find anything relevant to contribute to the discussion.
hey mr moon, nice to see you here, has been a while! how are you?
I also found this article from Kathryn Flett: 'I first read Illness As Metaphor 14 years ago (while bedridden with what was then called M.E. and is now chronic fatigue syndrome) and it helped me to stop perceiving a baffling illness as simply an invading, debilitating force beyond my control. The book stayed on my bedside table for the next three years and, I'm sure, contributed to my recovery.'
I am angry beyond words about what Kathryn Flett said in her column, NMJ, not least because the whole tone of it suggests that it is somehow (still) ok to diss people with M.E. I am sure she will be getting emails from PWME, mine will be one of them, but she has already anticipated this in her insulting comment about the "soi-disant community..."
It's all very odd. Her philosophy seems to be it's all quite wretched this pesky CFS (very telling she emphatically calls it that now) but cut out processed flour, read self-help books (albeit highbrow ones) & you are well on your way. If she had genuinely suffered from ME for 4 years I don't think she would dare risk being be so snide & hurtful to those who remain ill. I think she has deliberately set the cat amongst the pigeons so she has a column for next week, she can bleat about all the annoying emails she got from the soi disants. Okay, off to read some Susan Sontag...
I read KF's article with incredulity. She first gave a good, accurate description of how debilitating it feels to have ME, and then disses the whole experience as a delusion. She does all of this in the week when the Gilderdale case was front and centre of the news agenda. I'm baffled and saddened by her attitude.
Don't be baffled and saddened, Richard - be furious. As I have said elsewhere, even if we give her the benefit of the doubt and accept she did actually have ME - the real, hugely disabling kind, not the fashionable kind that you can throw into articles on a whim - why then does she risk being so crass & insensitive, especially in the week of the Gilderdale case being so prominent? ... She is really not worth any more of my typing energy.
One last thought... Given that she is a fairly high profile writer, if she did have ME - as we understand it - the illness that totally *dictates* lives - whether you eat bagels or read Susan Sontag or not - why the hell has she not been a lot more proactive in highlighting how bloody awful it is? No, instead she throws a few lines willynilly about her 'CFS' into her tv reviews/lifestyle columns, when it suits... I think she *possibly* had sth post-viral (that is the kindest thing I can find to say) coupled with depression & a huge dose of narcissism (both of these very obvious in her memoir)... but I just don't believe she had ME.
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