A message for ME Awareness Day 2025

Beautiful badge made by a friend of mine for ME Awareness Day 2025

Yesterday I did a thing! I set up a YouTube channel and posted my first video. You can watch the video here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1NAGWWYwJMKzyggv0c1Hw

This is the transcript...

Hi I'm Rachel. I'm speaking to you today as a Chinese herbalist but also as a carer to someone with ME.

ME is one of life's worst illnesses. Not just because of its life-altering impact on health but also because of the stigma, the misinformation, the patient-blaming and the constant battles that many people with ME have to deal with.

Many of my patients tell me that this causes so much added distress on top of an already very disabling condition.

If you have ME, whether that's developed post-Covid or from a different viral/bacterial infection, I just want to say that you deserve to be treated with kindness, with dignity and with compassion. You deserve to be heard, to be believed and supported. You deserve healthcare where people know about your illness and understand its impact on your life. You deserve a joined-up approach to your unique pattern of fluctuating symptoms. You deserve for your strength and resilience to be acknowledged. You deserve solutions to reduce your symptoms and improve your quality of life.

On ME Awareness Day 2025 while we wait for the final Delivery Plan for ME and for the results of the DecodeME research, my thoughts go out to all my patients with ME and their families. You deserve better.