Doctors & patients & writers ...

I attended a talk mid-week on doctors who also write, a hop and a skip from me. It was a long talk, almost two hours, and I found it so hard to concentrate towards end but it was very enjoyable hearing these three medics talk about their dual lives. You do not come across writing doctors very often and I was especially interested in their concerns about self-censorship when they also have such important social roles as doctors. During the Q&A someone referenced Virginia Woolf's essay 'On Being Ill'  - she wonders why there is so little fiction written on illness - and it seemed a good point to mention The State of Me. I said I was a patient turned writer and that self-censorship can be an issue for all writers. These doctors were all charming speakers - two are GPs, one is a child psychiatrist - and I wonder what their thoughts were when I said I have ME and have written a novel about it, that I was passionate about education through fiction. I did not mention my name or the book's title, but I wish now I had taken copies to give them.

After last week's travesty of science - and Prof Malcolm Hooper has written, as always, an eloquent response - I really have  no idea how we fix the distorted narrative. I think we have to look to the rest of the world, international biomedical research.

I have remembered a BMJ podcast from 2010 where Simon talked about ME. (This was during XMRV hype -  I always remained neutral, if XMRV was the answer, great, if not, let's move on to next thing (and we know how that all turned out). However, I have personally known since 1983 that my illness is connected in some way to my immune response to the Coxsackie B4 virus. The often not very bright media now tries and twists it to make out that it's only since XMRV that patients/researchers have linked ME to a virus. And that no XMRV = no virus. Not so.)

Anyway, in this podcast, Simon speaks around 4.25 mins in about the broad/narrow definitions of the illness, which of course is the whole crux of the conflation and chaos, though he does not seem too concerned with the chaos. The patients Simon sees/researches apparently get better with CBT and graded exercise therapy (GET), whereas those of us with my illness get worse with exercise, and I will keep saying this to those who will not listen. It struck me also that he had spoken back then about the need for other researchers to get involved, and 24 mins in, sounding very relaxed, says: 'Other disciplines should get more involved because CFS is under-researched' ...'and you'd be surprised to learn is actually  a very enjoyable and  very rewarding area of research.'

Very enjoyable and very rewarding.

No mention of the 'acute hostility and bravery' that last week earned him the John Maddox prize. The acute hostility - and I am not questioning that threats were made, I am sure they were, and no one would want to condone this - was, unnecessarily, ramped up to unbearable degrees  last year by a hysterical media, which  resulted in an entire patient population being (further) demonised. We can only wish  that Simon had perhaps practised some self-censorship in his dealings with the media.

Of course, if you actually *know* about the politics surrounding this illness  the Maddox award video seems like a spoof, like something from Drop the Dead Donkey - a newsroom satire from 90s -  an observation made by my mother. They're all daft, she said, shaking her head when I showed her. Bloody bastards, said my stepdad - who now has dementia - and later came into the living room with a pan on his head  - he loves joking with hats - but he has always been a source of great support to us throughout my illness, especially at the beginning, the utter, utter hell.

Am highlighting again this young scientist's blog where an informative discussion went on after the Maddox prize - it makes a change to have a thread where PWME are not drowned out by obnoxious, hostile, uninformed voices. *And then there is another young medic who exuberantly denounced PWME for 'stigmatising mental illness' and told us we have to grow up. He has obviously been fed the Wessely school narrative, and nothing else, but I  hoped he would be willing to educate himself and learn there is another narrative to explore.

After my novel came out in 2008 I breathed a huge sigh of relief, I honestly thought I'd never have to defend my corner again, I felt my job was done. But when we are continually assaulted  - and it *does* feel like assault - by twisted narratives and half-truths, we have to speak up, though it is truly and godawfully  sapping.

We have to speak up. These are our lives.

*I see this page has been removed, perhaps the young medic at www.thetwentyfirstfloor.com had a rethink about being so rude about an illness he clearly knows little about...