Ups and Downs of M.E.

On good days I begin to feel like I’ve got this thing beat. “I’m getting better!” “In a few more weeks I’ll be back to normal!” M.E. is famous for it’s fluctuating symptoms that can vary in severity from hour to hour and day to day. I’ll wake up after eight hours unrefreshing sleep feeling groggy, my head full of mud, my legs made of lead and it will take hours for my brain to begin to function. I used to be a morning person – happy to be up by 6 am or even earlier to fit in some journal writing before going to work. Yet now I often have to wait until mid afternoon to feel some energy creeping into my mind and body.

I think the good days are there to encourage us, to keep us going, to give us hope. Not everyone with M.E. gets good days – happily I do. Right now I’m trying to figure out if my recent good days are just part of the usual fluctuating symptoms, or can they be the result of a significant increase in meditation time that I began about ten days ago? Almost every day I’m taking around 45 minutes in the morning and the same again in the late afternoon for meditation practice or relaxation exercises. A quick look at the topics “meditation”, “mindfulness”, and “autogenic training” in Wikipedia brings up the related (clinically researched) health benefits – whether you have M.E. or some other condition.