I Lost This Round.

Admitting you just can't do it any more is a hard thing to do, especially when you are a stubborn old cow like me.

I was 22 when I developed ME/CFS. I prefer the name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome although I find a lot of people still know it better as M.E., myalgic encephalomyelitis. Yeah, like I am ever going to pronounce that right. I'll stick with CFS, thanks very much.

A few weeks ago I made the decision to leave my job. The decision broke my heart. I think I liked my job more than most people, but I had reached a point where I couldn't function any more. At the beginning of September I began experiencing a relapse which became more and more severe until I ended up unable to walk or even sit up for long. It scared me beyond belief because it had been many years since I'd been in that position, and much water has passed under the bridge since the early days I spent with CFS.

My trigger was glandular fever, which is nasty enough on its own. I started coming down with it days after having a laparoscopy to remove endometriosis and spent a few weeks in bed, totally floored by this rotten virus, watching the closing down of my favourite shopping channel and reruns of Blue's Clues to keep me sane. After initially starting to regain some strength I began to go downhill again. The doctors kept moving the goal posts - first they said it would take 6 months to feel better, then 9 months, then a year. The fact was, I never really got better.

I spent some time pretty much housebound. If I did go out, I would pass out or not be able to walk far enough. I used to have to have a half-hour nap from walking up the stairs at my family's house to go to the bathroom. My throat was constantly swollen and raw so I lived on soup and ice, every limb and muscle in my body hurt like I had been exercising for hours and my head throbbed all of the time. It was the mental impairments that truly got to me though. I lost my short-term memory, almost completely. Someone would say something and right away it would go back out my mind. I could remember what I'd done on any given day ten years ago but couldn't remember what I'd had for lunch. (Probably soup though!)

I began to lose a lot of words from my vocabulary. A typical conversation with me would go, "Oh! You know that thing on the thingy channel that had thing and thingy in it? Well, I heard that thingy was going to.... to do something with the thingy." My speech became slurred and I sounded like I was drunk all the time, I would mix up words so they could come out in the wrong order and even writing or typing all my letters and words would end up a garbled mess.

I fought. I worked a few hours a week for the next couple of years and did the best I could. When I stopped enjoying my job courtesy of a change of management I looked for another and found a teaching assistant post, just 6 hours a week, which I applied for and got.

My life changed. I loved that job more than words could express. It spurred me on, made me fight so hard. I gradually increased my hours over a long period of time until eventually I was working a full time job. I was able to support my then-fiance so we could move in together (we'd had a long-term, long distance relationship so it was about time!), I worked all week and still was able to go out one day at the weekend most weeks. I still had issues with exhaustion and suffered occasional relapses but I was as close to living a normal life as I've ever been since.

Almost 2 years to the day I started my job, I trekked up a hill with a group of students and staff on a geography field trip. I felt so rough, I could hardly keep moving to put one foot in front of the other. We were walking for over an hour, when suddenly we emerged from the thick woodland to come out onto what seemed like the top of the world. We could see for miles around. The sight took my breath away. I still have a mental picture of that in my mind. I thought about how, two years earlier, the stairs were my enemy. This day was probably the pinnacle of my health, and a personal mountain to climb.

Shortly afterwards I fell pregnant with my eldest, and unlike my previous pregnancies she was determined to stick - and to take all the strength and energy she needed. I relapsed quite badly during her pregnancy and was quite sick by the time she was born. The long labour and resulting c-section meant that I spent many of the first months of her life in bed.

I cut my working hours when I returned to work and my health started to even out. When I fell pregnant with Natasha when Angelica was 9 months old I was terrified of relapsing again but not only was Natasha's conception the easiest, so was her pregnancy. I worked right up to a couple of weeks before her birth and recovered almost right away after she was born.

I think I started to relapse around the tine of my miscarriage last November. I lost a lot of blood and my body never quite recovered. I dropped more hours at work but it made no improvement and I started a long, slow decline which sped up when I got a sticky bean in April this year. I have tried to fight back but this time the CFS was stronger than I am - and luckily so is my baby as I am certain all my strength and energy is going his way.

I eventually had to concede this round. I have given up the job I love to be a full time WAHM. This has been a massive culture shock to me. I am not very good at not doing stuff. It's been a real shock to my system not to get up and go to work, not to be able to take my girls for walks every day and not to be able to do all the household things I'd started to take for granted.

There are always silver linings in life. My husband works from home full time too so I get to spend every day with the people (and guinea pigs) I love the most. My home business has taken off insanely and I would never have put my focus into it if I'd still been working at my 'day job'. I can get the medicinal cuddles from my girls that make me feel better any time I need.

I am pretty sure that I won't go into remission from this relapse until after the baby arrives, but I'm starting to think that's OK. Giving in was hard and admitting that my body had let me down wasn't easy, but I can see positives in most things and in this case it's the two curly-haired girls who are pretending their plastic balls are various pieces of fruit, the naughty guinea pig who pushes his luck every time the fridge door is opened, and the man who has been wanting me to work from home full time for years. It's my beautiful, growing family and the precious extra moments I get to share with them. That's not a bad trade off by anyone' standards.