Fiction, memoir and International Consensus Criteria

Charming article from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  on fiction and memoir, she says: 'I long for a new form, a cross between fiction and memoir...' and speaks for us all when she says that 'fiction is more honest than memoir'. This is exactly why I wrote The State of Me as a novel and not a memoir, I wanted to get closer to the truth, as I described here. Also, I love that she is so laidback about fiction and memoir overlapping.

I'm re-reading 'On Being Ill', Virginia Woolf's brilliant essay in which she ponders the lack of novels about physical illness: 'The public would say that a novel dedicated to influenza lacked plot ...'.  It made me think of this extract from chapter eleven of my novel:

stranger   What did you do today?

me              I made cheese scones and put a dead bee in the bin. 

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Last week, I received a few printed and bound copies of The International Consensus Criteria 2012 from Invest in ME, and on re-reading, am struck again by how important such a document is:

Problem
The label ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’ (CFS), coined in the 1980s, has persisted due to lack of knowledge of its etiologic agents and pathophysiology. Misperceptions have arisen because the name ‘CFS’ and its hybrids ME/CFS, CFS/ME and CFS/CF have been used for widely diverse conditions. Patient sets can include those who are seriously ill with ME, many bedridden and unable to care for themselves, to those who have general fatigue or, under the Reeves criteria, patients are not required to have any physical symptoms. There is a poignant need to untangle the web of confusion caused by mixing diverse and often overly inclusive patient populations in one heterogeneous, multi-rubric pot called ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’. We believe this is the foremost cause of diluted and inconsistent research findings, which hinders progress, fosters scepticism, and wastes limited research monies.
 
Solution
Myalgic encephalomyelitis, a name that originated in the 1950s, is the most accurate and appropriate name because it reflects the underlying multi-system pathophysiology of the disease. Our panel strongly recommends that only the name ‘myalgic encephalomyelitis’ be used to identify patients meeting the ICC because a distinctive disease entity should have one name. Patients diagnosed using broader or other criteria for CFS or its hybrids (Oxford, Reeves, London, Fukuda, CCC, etc.) should be reassessed with the ICC. Those who fulfill the criteria have ME; those who do not would remain in the more encompassing CFS classification.

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I wish every GP in the land had a copy on their desk, would stop them writing derivative nonsense like this  (annoys me more as Margaret McCartney is a Glasgow GP, perhaps she thinks consultant neurologists at Southern General routinely gave plasma exchanges for somatisation disorders in 80s?).  Her article is from 2008, maybe she has educated herself since then about biomedical abnormalities, one can only hope. 

The ME Association is, in fact,  sending out educational material to GPs this May. Patients have given names of practices they wish the booklet to go to. Education of GPs is, of course, paramount to stopping the  lazy perpetuation of myths and fiction that has done so much harm to people with my illness. Am curious: are there any 'meeja' doctors in UK who write responsibly and accurately about ME?  I honestly don't know of any.